According to Arab and Persian cosmology, Mount Qaf is a mountain that surrounds the living world as a belt and can not be crossed in any way. Behind Mount Qaf, carries the observer to a journey in an extraordinary universe and aims to contemplate on your practice extensively both between your old and new works.
Even though it seems extraordinary, I am talking about something that belongs to us, which is indeed very modern. The exhibition actually presents a journey to our inner selves. In Islamic mythology, Mount Qaf is a concept that seems far away, a concept that can never be reached. It contains jinn, angels, pheonixes and dragons. From the masnavi perspective, it is about becoming the perfect human-being which signifies reaching towards the inner self. There is a story about the pheonix like this: birds are heading towards the Mount Qaf to find the pheonix and ask for salvation. On the way, they go through various troubles, some of them perish and some of them turn back. Eventually when they reach the mountain, they realize that they are in fact pheonixes themselves. This is indeed a process we all experience at some point. When we strive to find ourselves a saviour, struggle with our shadows and try to reach the point that seems somehow unapproachable; we eventually face ourselves and realize that we are actually creating those fears. We are actually the redeeming angels; when we expect from somebody to save us and then realize that somebody is actually us, this is when we get to reach Mount Qaf, it’s really not that far away.
The exhibition divides this journey into three segments as Heaven, Hell and Limbo.
Although they represent seperate segments, they are not independent from each other; because they are all about the life we experience. I installed Heaven on the ground floor because it already represents what we can do now. I changed its perception of being an unapproachable place in the sky and placed it on the ground floor because I think it’s a livable place.
Works that are exhibited at the ground floor of ARTER which establish a connection with the Istiklal Street, being one of the most crowded routes of the city; always draw a great deal of interest. What does this heaven include this time?
There is an animal kingdom, representing the nature. It is the representation of a universe in which fish, snakes, birds, pheonixes along with dragons; fire, water, earth, elements of air, stars, sun and moon are all together. All the animals here actually accompany us in our dreams, in the mythology and in tales; in a sense they are our shadowy side, our subconscious. Sometimes they appear to us as monsters and sometimes as friends, and they help us fight our shadows by holding our hands. They are gigantic three-dimensional animals having shiny paillettes. So this work was intrinsically made with a balance of night and day, bright and dark, good and bad. There is also such balance in the world we live in and it has to be provided. When the day is over and the exhibition closes, a curtain is installed on the display and the shadows are reflected towards the street owing to a light set up at the rear side. Once again we come back to the same question: how do we get along with these shadows on the streets, are we able to face our fears? What makes things so fascinating and beautiful at daylight and so scary and frightening at dark when there are shadows? How can we set a balance between our two sides?
How about Hell?
Şehretü’n-nar, mother of all the jinn, protects the Hell on the top floor. She’s a heroine having four thousand faces with different expressions on each face. This is a pitch-dark place and there are numerous jinn that shine with phosphorous light. Although it seems like a frightening place for the viewers, this section is actually about confronting our fears and understanding that they are in vain. We are creating our fears, meaning hell is in our own minds. Therefore there is no true “hell” in this exhibition. If we feel scared, it feels that way because we attribute the meaning to it. This section shows that we can only leave hell if we face this fact. In this hell, we are fighting with our shadows and reaching heaven. What does heaven promise us? A wonderful nature and the longing for a better world. And also beautiful human relations. A depiction of life in which your own sexual orientations, your aspirations and happiness are all together just as you want. The exhibition states that we want to live in heaven and it is really possible for us to create it here. We do not need to feel this longing behind Mount Qaf; we are in fact the Mount Qaf.
In one of your interviews, you define producing a work as a “catharsis” for yourself. How did you feel about creating this highly personal exhibition that is unique to your life and practice?
This exhibition led me to confront my shadows, make peace with them and leave behind the past, to continue and move on my path. It also guided me to give suggestions both for myself and the society. Unless we are able to solve our own problems as individuals and face our shadows, it does not seem possible to be collectively happy. I think that art is a medium of recovery both individually and collectively; because while this is a recovery process for me, it’s also a collective recovery process. All of our aspirations are the same as human beings, even though we seem to have socially different thoughts these days. We share the same things and I think all problems will be overcome when two sides become closer and share their longings, happiness, and sorrows. The authorities may differ but in the streets we are all brothers, friends and neighbors and there won’t be any problems when we start sharing.
