This blog contains the complete interview we made with my beloved friends Ayşegül Oğuz and Eda Gecikmez, during the preperation period of my solo show “In My Mind”. When “In My Mind” opened at Sanatorium on the 20th of May, we have prepeared these pages which you are going to wander, as a fanzine and distrubuted on the opening reception. As we had the joy of being self-contained, we had a heart-to heart conversation with the company of some rakı; and another night, some wine. And that was how the time flew.

Last night, I washed the corpse which we carried on our back. I regretted it the minute I scattered the bones around the bathtub, but it was too late. Firstly, I chose the ones that are cleaner (older), these were easier because the fibroid material that connects the joints, were dried away. These rather easily cleanable bones didn’t have worms along with water soked and blood bathered soil.

Before I started, I soaked the bones in hot water with vinnegar. Then I added some bleach. Meanwhile, I made some pasta with tomatogarlic sauce and gobbled it down. And I thought: “There is a dead horse in my bathroom and my stomach doensn’t react to it whatsoever”. Then I had a cup of coffee. Soon there was nothing to make me procastinate, I got to bussiness. I put on the gown that Gümüş had given me as a present and lemon scented plastic gloves. Then I looked around  for a sort of mask but there wasn’t any. I remembered what you said to me yesterday, after I asked the time of the island ferry, insidiously: “Aren’t you precautious!”. But I have forgotten the mask, what about that?

Now, as I am telling about it, I can feel my skin burning in the face, at the points where the corpse water splattered to. I persistently call it a corpse,  yes. It was a dead horse, a corpse. It was lying in my bathtub,  shattered into pieces. I put all the pieces, one by one, onto the plastic bags I have layed on the hardwood floor. Now they looked like findings from an archeological site. I immediately photographed them, god knows why. Now they have become ammunition which the police captured; small and big bullets, hand granades, guns and kalashnikovs.

What I am and what I will become;

is the joint of my finger that pressed the shutter, bunch of bones brushing the pelvis…

while I was writing these, I listened to the album Sonido Amazinico from the band Chicha Libre. The stove was heating up my studio.. It was the 7th of April and the weather was freezing like winter.

Ayşegül Oğuz: As an artist who offen returns to her childhood in her practice, how would you desribe the mood of your last show?

Sevil: I rather desribe“In my mind” gradually by comparing it to my first show. “I Watched It As It Diseppeared on the Horizon”  was  rather saying bigger sentences, where I started from my self and tried to meet the sociological facts. It was a show which questioned and critisized  the patriarchy and the tags that we have, by the moment we were born. This show is rather a personal one, more like a diary.

Eda Gecikmez: In your previous show, the moments that belong to you met at  a where history and sociology overlapped.  In this show, didn’t you have such a concern?

Sevil: Here, there is a fullcircle where I start from myself and eventually reach myself again. I wonder in that circle. I do not get out.

Ayşegül: You simultaneously opened your previous show with Zeyno Pekünlü’s “Osman Killed me” exhibition. How did you end up meeting with Zeyno Pekünlü?

Sevil: I guess Feza saw that our questions and matters collide with eachother, and asked us both. I thought this meeting was a good idea. As Zeyno had mutual feelings, we came together a few times. I have worked at collective fields before. With Erkin Gören in Mtaar, with Neriman Polat and at the same time, coming together for Kırmızı Kart… I feel it is lucky that we came together for that show. Zeyno was a student at the Neş’e Erdok studio, we worked side by side for a period of time. But she quitted the painting practice as a medium and leaned to other kind of works. Zeyno is a comrade in a field I walk though, and also an artist whom I appreciate the works of.

Ayşegül: You’ve said “there is a fullcircle where I start from myself and eventually reach myself again”. Could  you describe this circle?

Sevil: In “In My Mind”, there were times that I’ve compared my adolescence period with my moms girlhood. It contains my last two years. During Gezi and post-Gezi. I do not have a precise route. Imagine finding a diary on a kitchen table at a place, I know so little amount of people who wouldn’t take a glance at it. My way is more like that pleasure of secretly peeping. People will be feeling like as if they were  peeping on my diary, while watching my show.

Ayşegül: Well, how did you come to decide to open up your diary though your paintings and with a language of a visual world?

Sevil: I didn’t plan it. I paint in order to heal. When I experience a dilemma – could be countrywise, with my boyfriend, my student or my friends for instance- , the way I deal with it is firstly to go back to my own shell. I vanish off the face of the earth and find myself in my room. When we were little, we used to make a tent out of the blankets. I want to crawl inside a blanket and remain there. I take nourishment from my own sources. From streets, my friends, my memories and photographs, I take off from there.

Aysegul: You say that you are a painter. By familiarising with paint and canvas, you conbine the past with the future. You collide both past and the future by familiarising with paint and the canvas. And you represent this atmosphere through a body of plastic elements.

Sevil: I primarily paint to heal. The second, and satisfying stage of it is to share.

Eda: In fact there’s this: the viewer’s perspective become different with a person who creates and paints. It forms different varieties of perspectives. What you see as brave, is vital for us artists. You open up an emotional area, through your personal area. The stories which the artist reveals, are the stories which we a part of, this way or another. It smears all of us. You know when you mentioned the diary on a kitchen table, I sensed as if you are one who is going through the diaries. This show is kind of giving me that impression. You ship out from me, Gokce and become a part of other people’s lives. Because all of our stories are connected to each other. You chose that image with a shared/mutual feeling. Isn’t this the thing, when we say private is political?

Sevil: I agree, you are right. This is a fine and accurate diagnosis. I am in shock of the fact that it can be understood this clearly from where you stand.

Eda: I am wondering, which image or memory was the first to trigger you? Not only for this show, but for the method you adopt overall?

Sevil: It is enough to have just one memory or photograph. As I was starting to work for this show, I didn’t have spesific photograph or a memory that prepossessed my mind. My life has a flow and I like to give in to that flow. I can not pass by not mentioning this: Last June, we have got a mail from Selda Asal.  She said that after Gezi, she wanted to make a show about Gezi called “staw with me”, as she fictioned it to be a show of notebooks, she asked of us to prepeare notebooks telling of those times.

Eda: Where Selda was coming from was, that we lived Gezi, it was unbelievable, and Selda wanted to create an archive of what we have experienced. This show was first exhibited in Berlin, than the next stop was DepoIstanbul.

Sevil: After Gezi, I settled down quite for a while. Undertstanding and re-rememebering Gezi happened after I started making this notebook. I also saw this, in many of us. Gezi is unexplainable. That state of being state-less and police-less, was very beaqutifull but also very uncanny. To have Taksim for just for ourselves was unbelievable. But in the meantime, wasn’t it very creepy? I was walking, happy, but I felt like there is going to be bombs raining on us at the same time.

Eda: I remember feeling like this, we are all in an isolated setting and if something happens to one of us or his/her house gets burgled, there is no police. People called “Çarşı” instead of the police. No police, no state on the street. You could steer and change anything, any moment. Haven’t we all experienced that? I went to Urban (a local cafe), the tables were inside, “why aren’t your tables outside?”, I asked. They said “Don’t you know that law has passed, we can not put the tables outside.”. “You are not recignizing the state we are in right now” I said, “we don’t have that law right now, put your tables outside”. The waiter was puzzled. No one was aware of what they were experiencing. That moment we were inside a hole.

Sevil: It was like a dream.

Ayşegül: After one year has passed after Gezi, what were the things triggered by the invitation to the show “Stay With Me”?

Sevil: As I was considering Selda’s offer, I  started to check on my memory about “what I really did last year?”. Then I slowly storified it daily. What I did, what I did, why was I there, why wasn’t I there, such stories formed that notebook. Actually, the trigger to my solo show was the existence of this book, where I tried to recall things. Therefore, this notebook is utterly important to me. I started to keep a diary and all those feelings came back, that rage.

Aysegul: Taking back Gezi and the moment when the police left the square behind without coming back  for 15 days, was a terrific moment. That historical picture of AKM where its façade hosted all the elements of Gez, how can one forget about that…

Sevil: How many weeks were we without a state? 15 days? I never lived the camp life. I was reading, we were sunbathing, visiting the library and Müşterekler stand (a group called Our Commons) but I didn’t stay there as a guard. Then Ali Ismail died and after that, I was lost .

Aysegul: Now that it has been a year since you made that notebook via Selda’s invitation, How did it feel like, looking at Gezi over again?

Sevil: Getting an in invitation from this project made me feel gracious about the way it reminded me of Gezi. I have been procastinating the whole process of Gezi. I got back there again.

Eda: I remember your journey, you decided to draw the houses you visited, then started drawing those rooms. You entered your own room and revealed what was in your pockets. Could you say that notebook revealead a new way of method? I remember you feeling anxious about the uncanny situation. You also had drawing the beds you slept in, in your mind.

Sevil: As I’ve looked over Gezi thought that notebook, I felt melancholia. Because I was feeling regretfull that I forgot about Gezi. I felt guilty. A friend once told me, when they were little, she and her cousin were playing in the kitchen and started a fire there, the curtains were cought in flames. They were so terrified by this, they closed the kitchen door and went to sleep. They chose to deny it instead of putting it out.

Just like what they did to me during the Canakkale Biennale. With that notebook, I realised the severeness of what we had experienced. Even though meditating and expressing it on paper made me feel good, I also felt hopeless. Haven’t we all become numb? As a child, who was brought up with the notion: fear of God, when I was questioning that notion, I remember nearly going insane. I remember looking at the mosque through the window of my room and asking “who is this God?”. Who is this? If there is a God, what and who are we? I can’t remember if I had started elementary school or not. I recall slightly going insane. For a period, just because I couldn’t make sense of it, I remember the urge to throw mud at that uncertainty. It is a sin to talk bad about God, but the voice inside me was so strong: saying “God is shit”. I was saying God is shit in every step I took. God is shit, God is shit, repent, may god forgive me.... I can’t remember how I calmed down.  It was like the uncertainty in Gezi. What is happening now? What kind of a thing we are in? We are happy, but could this be an illusion? People are dying? Why are they dying? No case is relevant, what is just, is solely just in capitalist system. I am reading Nurdan Gürbilek’s book these days. She talks about the ‘strategy of disengagement’. What is justice? If Napoleon kills and nothing happens to him, why I am being jailed when I kill? If when an SS soldier in Germany is being convicted to death or lifetime imprisonment, why is the world so blind on the shelling of Gaza by Israel?

Aysegul: You said that you do the painting in order to heal. What do you mean by healing?

Sevil: The healing I mentioned was about the last two years. The process of getting ready for my first exhibition and the event that occured in Çanakkale Biennale.

Aysegul: What happened in Canakkale Biennale?

Sevil: We had a studio with Gümüş Özdeş in Taksim. I started to prepare for the show there. It was the first time I would have a solo show, and I have not worked with a gallery before. I remember being stuck. We were deported from the building we are in, in the context of the Akp’s pedestrianization project. It was an old rock building. We residing along with Turan Aksoy, Nuri Kuzucan and Seçkin Pirim and we were all exiled. I was out of axis, it was just a few months due  the show. Meanwhile I moved to a small room of my friend’s place in Moda and concluded my works there. In the meantime I was invited to the Canakkale Biennale. Ten days after the Bienale was over, I accidentally found out about what happened to my artwork. I found out that before the exhibition was over, a part of my installation was attacked with a sharp object and for worse,  it remained being shown like as it is. The curators, even though they knew about it, didn’t inform me on that. On top of that, they wouldn’t want me to expose this injustice I have experienced. Their ways of conciliation was nothing like my understanding of reconciliation, they wanted me to stay mute. I decided not to stay silent, and resist. I was exhausted. It was unnerving.

Aysegul: There was a guerilla girl in your work in Canakkale Biennale. How did you decide to contribute with this work?

Sevil: I prepeared that  installation for an exhibition curated by Fırat Arapoglu again, in Kargart. It was actually a wall of about 16 pieces of work. I have read the book “Bildigin gibi Degil” printed by Metis (Publishing House), and was very moved by it. In the book which told about being a child in the Southeast in the 90’s, there were photographs of houses from Sirnak and various places from the area,  riddled and devastated by state and gengarme, and testimonies of people who are exiled from their very houses. Horrible stories. Following that, I read Bejan Matur’s book “Dagin Ardina Bakmak” (Looking Beyond The Mountain). I was in an urge to compare myself, a woman pursuing an urban life, with a woman who choses to live in the mountians and adopt that mountain as a home. I was very moved by a photo in Bejan Matur’s book. One of the guerilla girls had socks with polka-dots. You are exiled from your homeland and forced to run to somewhere else. In fact the State pushes you there. Then it doesn’t want you to be there. But you have the need to call some place home, so it becomes your home. You build a life there. I started thinking about how you would continue your existence as a woman. How do I see the mountain? Which is why I portrayed some of the guerillas as myself. I was the guerillas smelling the flowers at the summit of the mountain , holding a kalashnikov. Those were exercises to understand the ‘mountain’. And from those exercies, the installation came up. I made a wall of mirror, postcards, guerilla girls and drew bullet-holes around them. That was why there were bullet-holes, the houses were riddled with bullets. This work of mine was also shown in Mardin, the Kurdish thought I was a Kurd. There were people who conratulated me and hugged me. I was so moved. In the end, it was a personal work.

Aysegul: What exactly does the guerilla figure mean to you?

Sevil: To struggle. If we are about to talk about the women’s struggle, this year we became aware of the women who left their children behind in order to fight in Kobane. She leaves to fight because she cares about her child’s future. Perhaps her children were left without a mother, but in so doing, they have got Kobane back.

Aysegul: Why is past so important to you, why do you care so much? What is it in past, you are hoping to find?

Sevil: In order to continue my path, I need the past. It has a healing, strenghtening effect on me. This is not being stuck in past, I need to compare my past reaction mechanisms to my present moment and understand if I have progressed. Understand who or what I have become. I do not want the time to flow unconsciously. This is not taking everything, events or even myself under control. I want to accept my mistakes, appologise, do better and be happy about the unforgettable moments and be gratefull for them.

Ayşegül: What triggered you to become a painter? In such point where your school life, things you’ve learned there and your artistic practice got you, how did you become the artist who produces the works of ‘Sevil Tunaboylu’ as we know?

Sevil: As a child, I was brought in two seperate houses. One was my grandmother’s house, we used to spend the whole day there. My mother, my grandmother, my grandmother’s friends, guests, my mother constantly labouring as a bride and myself. And in the afternoon, to our own flat; my mom, my father, me and my brother who ‘d be born afterwards. We lived the nights together. In daytime, the life went under the control and rules of my grandmother. I barely got out of the house. I was not a child who jumped rope and played hopscotch on the streets. And what was there to do at home? Painting! My story of painting started like this. In highschool, my teachers told me about the existence of a fine arts school, they wanted me prepare to get into the school – by the present name Avni Akyol, very much. But my parents couldn’t understand my will. I was a very succesful student, I should have get to an Anatolian school.* Meantime my will for painting was growing inside. I wanted to become a painter, yet I didn’t know what it really meant to be a painter. I saw the person who is a painter as someone who paints by his/her canvas, opens exhibitions and earns his/her life like this. In hischool, my teachers backed me up and  on the last day of application, I applied without my parents’ knowledge. I really can’t tell when I told them this. After a shprt period of preparing, I won the exam. I studied there for four years. That period of time changed me a lot. I read Dostoyevski and Tolstoy for the first time in my life.

Aysegul: You went from Bayrampasa to Kadikoy to study in school? Both that time in the school and also the route you followed to get school from home; what kind of contributions  did those made on your perspective of freedom?

Sevil: After the mixed classes in first year, we had the classes like literature, philosophy, psychology, sociology and painting , in during the next three years. The school had a music department also, we painted as we were surounded with flute and piano sounds. Meanwhile we are learning about art history, turkish painting. You go to the exhibitions on the weekends. You see how the upper classes and students paint, and you know that you can do as weel as they do. It was a period of time where little a girl handed with intensive care, liberated. If you are studying in that school, the other level is of course, to study in Mimar Sinan, the Academy. Everytime we passed by it, I used to say “I will study in this school” . Inquestionably, I overrated the Academy. For me, it was a summit to reach. I got into the Mimar Sinan so easily. Right after that I crashed into the wall. It was a big crash. But it was also a good crash.

Ayşegül: Whose studio did you enter?

Sevil: First year, you study the basic arts, you do not have studio lessons. Second year, through a lottery method, I was located in  the Nes’e Erdok’s studio, my last preference in mind. I wanted to get into the 5th studio: Zekai Ormanci’s. I had to spend time in Nes’e Erdok’s studio for a term. Second term, they told me that I could change the studio.  Of course it kind of acquired some hassle.

Aysegul: Why did you want to get into Zekai Ormancı’s studio?

My friends from highschool; Ekin Saçlıoğlu, Şevket Sönmez, Emir Özer has gotten into Zekai Ormancı studio. The working methods were rather liberated, comparing to the others. Much later, I listened from Neriman that they’d used to do performances during the term exams, it had used to be a more dynamic exam atmosphere even. Güçlü Öztekin was working there. I met Güçlü there. You enter the door, there’s a filthy wall there on the left, Güçlü is painting on the wall, there’s a thin paper streched on the wall, he paints with whatever he comes through with. The wall is pitchblack. There was Güneş Terkol and Gözde İlkin. They were painting on canvas rather watery. Then they started working with clothes and textile with the inspiration from Gülçün Aksoy and Yasemin Nur’s carpet studio. There was Merve Çanakçı. Erhan Özışıklı also did some amazing works, with an authenticity where faces became amorph and figures made a sound of roaring. He had his own world. It was enchanting. Erinç Seymen was there. I already had a good anatomy and perspective educated. I couldn’t have wasted my time painting still-life in Nes’e Erdok studio. I needed to do other things.

Aysegul: How would you describe the disappointment you experienced, the moment you got into the academia, –in your terms- ‘crash’?

Sevil: I realised that officialism slaved the individuals, more precisely, tamed them.

Eda: While I was at second year in the Academy, we made a demonstration titled “we don’t want an official professor”. We all wore ties: “we are not officials, say no to the studios that close down at 5:00pm!” we said that we came there to paint, to make art. It didn’t quite echo in the social scene though, the ambience was complicated. The time you get into the school, you feel like caressing the Osman Hamdi statue. But that romance lasts just for two months, after that you get harshly slapped …

Sevil: For once, it is a highly male-dominated place. Talented woman is a woman with a man’s skills, oh talented woman! Almost like this. But it contained intersting people. In studio 5, there was proffessor Resat (Atalık), he was eccentric, he admired Rembrandt and he hated the colour ultramarine-blue. I deliberately used ultra-marine blue. He constantly roared “awful, awful awful”. He was very old. He lifted weighs every morning. We got along well. Even though he didn’t like my painting, he would view it with interest and critisized.

Eda: I also wanted to get into that studio. When studying in Marmara (university), I studied in Zekai Ormancı studio as a guest student when I was preparing for Mimar Sinan, anyway. But there is this, it was a studio that catched the zeitgeist, even if just a bit. The other ones were so dull. When I got in Mimar Sinan, I was placed in Kemal Iskender’s studio by lottery. It was nothing like Neş’e Erdok, Aydın Ayan nor Mehmet Mahir whatsoever. The only moment that I catched my own frequency was in this studio, when –now deceased- Zekai Ormancı was there. When he left, the spirit ended.

Aysegul: How did you get on your feet after the ‘crash’?

Sevil: It happened so much later. There is no such moment. When I got to the university, I had a total confidence about my skills, my paintings and my drawings. For this reason, I thought it would continue like this. My works would be admired, I would always paint with passion and be happy. But university is such a place with so many people, so many characters. The reason I crashed was this:  I was educated in a very classical and basic way. It was a good education. Both theoretically and practically. But my courage to create was still immature. I already could draw and paint the actual very well, but I had no idea about the painting I would do when I am with myself. You know I told you that I paint to heal, well I had no such idea, back in school. That was the problem. The time I got in the Mimar Sinan, I saw that everyone had a problematic of their own in the Zekai Ormancı studio. Meanwhile I was busy painting a glass in a perfect form, I was drawing but totally ignoring my self out. It took me quite a while to find out my own problematic. It happened after the graduation. I crawled for five years. I painted in perplexity. But at least I learned engraving. Back in highschool, when I saw Aliye Berger exhibition in Kazım Taskent Art Gallery, I fell in love with her. The reason I chose the engraving studio was Aliye Berger.

Eda: In the academy, regardless of everyting we were in competition. The way the male students talked to the teachers was different than the way I talked to them. I remember not being taken seriously. It was an obvious situation wherein the female students were held back in education and taken for granted. And it was very annoying not to be taken seriously. Meanwhile the ego of the male students were getting larger as they get constant notice and .

Sevil: There was a guy named Yalçın, we were studying basic arts in the same term. He had Fikret Mualla kind of works he did with guache. He acted as if he were the most talented student in the school, and he was supported by the professors. One day he said to me: Now you ‘ve won my favor Sevil!(I had bought a good brand of brush!)

Eda: Lately, there was a discussion titled ‘painting and education’ between Ahmet Doğu İpek and Mehmet Güleryüz, moderated by Ahu Antmen. They’ve talked about the classical education, how was it, how Mehmet Güleryüz’s education was, because he graduated from the academy and tought there.

His whole narration contained a great romanticism of course. A complete repetation of those stories that they smothered us with, while in academy. Ahmet barely had a turn of speaking. When he could he spoke of some issues, but when he passed the ball to Mehmet Güleryüz, there was no feedback at all. It was very boring. After a while, it was time for questions and with a great effort, I had a word: I am a graduate from Mimar Sinan Painting Department. My family had no idea what or how painting education was, no clue at all. My luck helped me. My father said “If you were a boy I wouldn’t let you, I let you because you are a woman”. I was a succesful student at school. My professors used to say “brava, you have the hand of a man”. Kemal İskender once tapped on my back and said “We provide you education but one day you will get married and be gone”. After telling this, I said “Mr. Mehmet I’d like to ask you three questions”. “…because you are a graduate from the Academy, what are your opinions on the sexist and abusive form of education in the academy?” Güleryüz was astonished. My second question, how do you explain that there are no female professors , not even one in the Mimar Sinan Painting Department?” . “No no,  you know it wrong, of course there is” he replied. There wasn’t. There was only Nes’e Erdok  who recently retired, but in present there is no female professor. And thirdly, “you opened up a very fascinating exhibition. Institutions like this, Istanbul Modern, what do they contribute to the art educationi in your opinion?” I asked. Because for all I know, no woman artist had an exihibiton in Istanbul Modern before. Mehmet Güleryüz was beet red. He mumbled… He claimed that there wasn’t any abuse in the Academy, then continued “Isn’t there anyone from our time, here?”. Hearing this, Ahu Antmen said “Nur Koçak is here”. Then Nur Koçak got a word and said “Excuse me Mehmet but there was and is abuse both in our time and also in the present day. I experienced harrassment myself.” Then Mehmet Güleryüz continued: “We were like a family, we protected our female friends, they told us their confidentials. Have you watched my show? My show is such a feminist one, I would expect you to ask me about the image of woman through my perspective.”  “you are claiming that you are interested in woman as a subject , and you are speaking for hours, yet you mentioned the names of only two women, and one of them was mentioned by Ahmet, that was Aliye Berger. The other one was mentioned by you, it was your aunt, yet you didn’t give her name.” I said. Hearing this he said that these issues are irrevelant to him , that he found my questions too feminist and closed the argument.

Sevil: We should go to the talks and seminars of the so called modernist men, and ask questions deliberately. We should argue. Their mindset should be exposed. When Eda told me about this, I had fabulous dreams that night.

Aysegul: It is a fact that the university contributes profoundly to human life experience, but according to your telling, can we say that you were a little bit dragged from painting? Was there a stunning moment when you saw the projection of your own problematic on paper or canvas? Could you describe it?

Sevil: It started in the University but it was hesitative. I mostly shot photographs and video during the University.

Eda:  You already had the painting in the pocket, of course…

Sevil: It was in pocket yes but also I was downhearted due to that crash. I put a distance. I gravitated to photograph. I had the camera all the time. I wrote. I have a lot of diaries from that period. Short poems and writings… I think the actual realisation of myself happened during the establishment of Mtaar.

Ayşegül: How did Mtaar start? How kind of a need was it for you? Can we say the painting entered your life again through mtaar period?

Sevil: I didn’t have a studio back then and was living with my family. I really worked on tiny spaces. The same year, with a friend of mine both from lycee and university Erkin Gören, we opened up a studio in Kadıköy. It had a name also,  Atölye 11. We were teaching illustration and free drawing. One day Erkin sees a store to be emptied and rent, then comes to me and says “Shall we turn this place to an art space? We would open shows every month” and I say ok. That place becomes available and we turn the place into the Mtaar Open Art Space. We made exhibitions every other month. Lots of exhibitions mixed and solo. Totally non-profit. We earned nothing. We gave classes and paid the rent of the space with that earnings. And from the artist we asked for the half of the price of the brochures we were to print for instance,  or if a wall was to be painted, he/she would buy the paint. We made 13 exhibitions during one and a half year. Right at that point where I started questioning things. We were very shy about directly diving into the system, the gallery system. Also it was very hard, you had to market yourself, make them like you. Little chance that you apply to a gallery, and wait them to review your portfolio … without asking you silly questions, they coloborate with you for a show and all… these things weren’t easy anyway. My problematic started there.

Ayşegül: Hafriyat had a big impact on several artists from your generation . What does Hafriyat stand for, in your opinion?

Sevil: If it wasn’t for Hafriyat’s independent and angry position, we wouldn’t come up with the mtaar idea. Hafriyat was an important model for me. I realised its existence very late. I entered that heaven in 2008.

Ayşegül: What does “Mtaar” stand for?

Sevil: It is the contraction of “Mülayim Taarruz”. 

Ayşegül: What does it mean to you, owning a studio?

Sevil: Studio is a very confidential place. It is your, bed actually. Therefore it is very important. I had a hard time about this, while I was living with my parents. For a long time, I worked in a living room where the Tv was always on. Those circumstances added a lot to me, when I think of it. I had a serie called “Domestic Existence”. I was spontaneously drawing objects which my father or brother left around. I made a scrapbook like that. The tv was on, there are drawings where I strech my legs towards the Tv. I drew whatever was on on Tv. I constantly drew but things were happening around me. The serie “Salon” blossomed up from that activity. We showed it in Hafriyat along with Erkin. What is in the serie “Salon”? Pop stars, actors in tv dramas, my mom, dad, brother, the stacked bowls of popcorn and cereals… Naturmortes… We exhibited that in Hafriyat and following that we opened Mtaar. Then after one and a half year, we had to close it.

Ayşegül: Then you started sharing a studio with Gümüş Özdeş in Taksim, right?

Sevil: I moved into Gümüş’s studio in Sakızağacı. It was 2010, Mtaar has closed, I am looking for a job. That when I heard that Neriman Polat was looking for an asistant. Of course I knew of Neriman from Hafriyat;; working for her is one of the most important actions of my life. I is wonderfull working for Neriman. She is a very vivid and determined woman. When she falls emotionally, she knows how to stand up using great maneuvers. We were a fine pair. In 2010, I started working with Neriman, and living the studio life with Gümüş at the same time. During that 2,5-3 years working for Neriman, I joined a bunch of mixed exhibitions. 2010-12 were years when I met and worked with a lot of people, and when I started thinking about political issues and be a part of them. For instance, Ateşin Düştüğü Yer (Where the Fire Has Struck)

Aysegül: In Ateşin Düştüğü Yer exhibition, two works left mark on my mind, one was neriman’s and the other one was your work “O Tabak Bitecek”. What was striking about that work was this, in my opinion: in that show, there were several works of wellknown artists of our day, produced by using the comtemporary mediums, but you have made paintings.

Sevil: I cannot remember what drove me to paint those childrens’ faces, for Atesin Düştüğü Yer. I have found myself searching “children who were murdered by the state” on Google. The children appeared on the screen at that moment. Most of them kurdish, some others drowned in the TOKİ (Housing Development Administration of Turkey) wells. My D place for looking materials is Tahtakale, While I was wandering there I saw these coasters for cakes, I decided to use them instantly. There would be an iconographic expression thought them and they were also happened to be plates. “That plate shall be finished” is the title of my work but it is also a sentence that we all heard in our childhoods. If I leave even one piece of rice behind on that plate, those rice would come together and eat me, when the judgement day comes. As I was brought up with this kind of mindset, the sentence “that plate shall be finished” was very important to me. I tried to point out to a plate that the states cannot finish that easily.

It was a difficult period, I didn’t only paint them, I ‘ve confronted their stories. You look them in the eye. Ceylan Önkol, Uğur Kaymaz, Erdal Eren… that was the period I started painting them. I read so much, that one morning my parents had to take me to hospital. Because something stacked inside of me and neither I could spit it out nor defecate it. I was literally green. It was some kind of an emotional intoxication. Then I put on the auto-pilot and finished the painting. After that term, I decided to read more.

Ayşegül: We can see that our issues come out and spring through the Atesin Düştüğü Yer exhibition and other shows which you exhibited in, and became more visible. Would it be accurate to say that you adopted a political identity that became slowly visible, through the years 2005- 2010?

Sevil: Closing down Mtaar, coming to Taksim from Kadıköy, intersecting with Gümüş and Neriman, meeting and start working with Neriman and several femisit artists; they’re all in the same era. We were giving lessons with Neriman, and we became companions. While being skeptical about everything, the conversations we made with Neriman made my mind chrystal. While there is a mass killing in Roboski, you can only be tangent to the pain of those people miles away. It was the same feeling with Soma. You can’t be a part of it, yet you only can exist as your tangent feelings. That’s why friendships are so important. I joined Ateşim Düştüğü Yer exhibition via Neriman. It was a period of time when I couldn’t have gone out of the lifecircle I had with my family yet, working on Domestic Existence in a rather tiny space, living the dining room life.

Aysegül: What was the first information you had about Uğur Kaymaz’s killing, for instance?

Sevil: When Uğur Kaymaz was killed, I was studying at the university. It was the last year of the university, had a flat in Beşiktaş. But my mind was so absent. It is not about getting political I guess, you become the friends you have. You go though change along with the road you walk with your friends. I was lucky, I met beautiful people. You asked me why I was obsessed with my past, that is beacuse I don’t want to spend my time unconciously. I want to remember, because forgetting is hell. That is what we are living now; we cannot talk about 24th of April 1915 entirely. I was in an uncanny mood, while I was standing in that square, during the commemorial.

Ayşegül: I assume that you also started to call yourself a feminist in this era.

Sevil: Coming across with a lot of feminist artists occured at the same time as the “Ateşin Düştüğü Yer” exhibition took place. We studied in the same school with Zeyno, but we met at this time I mentioned. We had never drank raki untill that date. We came together with the women after the Ateşin Düştüğü Yer exhibition. Selda Asal, Nurcan Gündoğan, Neriman Polat, Nalan Yırtmaç and we started talking as women. What could we do more? How can we put a struggle on patriarchy? The more we talked, the more we knew eachother.

Ayşegül: And who are the artists which you are effected by the most? Not necessarily in an explicit way but though their existence, perhaps?

Sevil: Avni Lifij. I met him during Lycee, he had an exhibition in Yapı Kredi Kazım Taşken Gallery then. There was a portrait, scaled 4 cm to 4 cms. You see that portrait of mine there, o a stone? It was small like that and I was enchanted by the moment I saw it. And also I like the way he paints like he is making fun of himself. He painted a lot of self-portraits. In the one hanged on my wall, he is portraying a drunk. He has adorable landscapes. He paints the night, so well. After Avni Lifij, comes Aliye Berger. Then Kuzgun Acar. Fikret Mualla. But I want to come to today, to Fulya Çetin’s exhibition. We viewed the show in Depo with Erkin and were walking to Karaköy. While were we talking about it, I realised: Fulya looks at some houses which have no chance but burning. She at them as if they are frozen frames. She tries to reach out to that deprivation. It seems like she is trying to break free of the idea of possession. On the other hand, she swiftly passes by a beautiful rose. She doesn’t look at the rose, she doesn’t stare at it. That made me sad. I wish she had looked at that rose. She insistingly stares at a burning house. Perhaps, she doesn’t want to leave anything behind and start a brand new life. I also like Leyla Gediz very much. Because Leyla is transmitting state of emotions so well. I viewed one of her shows years ago. There were polyester-made, huge man socks , left and scattered around the corner of a house. It was like an expression of a feeling she had in her own house. The connection she builds with objects, painting of a toy that has been dropped on the floor may be an expression of her being abandoned. The way she drew the petals in her father’s garden for days… It was very effecting  the way she fictioned her existence in that house, in the show in Rampa. I also was very moved by the show of Gülçin Aksoy, the life she lived in Samsun, the story of her brothers…

Ayşegül: How do you associate the text you wrote for the invitation of your show “Aklımda”, with your works?

Sevil: I go to Burgaz, the island sometimes. One day as I was taking a walk, I came across a horse on the ground. I had just died. Its neck was decayed but its head and body was remained. Then I took some pictures of it. I wondered if I could witness the stages of decaying and take pictures. How does a body decay? While doing this, I had no intention of making an art object out of it. The idea formed later on. I went back a few times. Then I decided to collect the bones. I took them without knowing why. I just didn’t want to leave them there. The body was there lying gallantly. It wasn’t buried. It belonged to no one. If I were taking any simple thing that I found on the street and put in my pocket, I couldn’t have left the bones there. So I wanted to take them. We collected the bones of that horse with Mert (Oztekin) and Deniz (Örnek). We carried them in black trash bags and left them in the garden of my friend Gökçe, who lives in Burgaz. We didn’t bury it too… the bones still had flesh on them. After carrying  it, we cleaned ourselves.

After a time passed, I had to take the bones. So I took that corpse and carried it to my place in Moda, with Deniz (Koloğlu). Then I threw them in the bathtub. I regretted it right that moment. That night was a very difficult night for me. I was alone in the flat. As I put on my gown and gloves and started cleaning the bones, it felt like as if it were my bones that I am holding. I cleaned them. All that’s written in the letter is real! And the next day, while trying to survive the day though listening to this very festive music album, I started writing  this letter to Deniz, telling my experience. I wanted to feel relieved. I never thought it would affect me this much. I didn’t know what to do with the bones. After spending a very harsh night with them, the occurance of that letter relieved me so much and I wanted the bones to be a part of my exhibition. Remember, we talked about healing? That letter and the dialogue we formed with Deniz, healed me. I wrote that letter, I cried and I was healed.

I thank to those who put up with my pain

Elçin Acun, Emre Akçora, Özgül Arslan, Gökçe Deniz Balkan, Tuba Çakıroğlu, Nazım Hikmet Richard Dikbaş, Ozan Eras, Eda Gecikmez, Onur Girit, Erkin Gören, Gözde İlkin, Ahmet Doğu İpek, Deniz Koloğlu, Ayşegül Oğuz, Beksultan Oğuz, Deniz Örnek, Gümüş Özdeş, Erhan Özışıklı, Güçlü Öztekin, Mert Öztekin, Neriman Polat, Saadet Sorgunlu, Erinç Seymen, Işıl Şipal, Nihan Tahtaişleyen, Güneş Terkol, Alaattin Tunaboylu, Leman Tunaboylu