invisible to the eye: şerife, rahime, nezihe

This mini project, which focuses on the feminist haunting of Turkey through the art scene, aims to open a space for the stories of those who feel “other” in non-alien societies. While trying to read the alienation in familiar places through a ghost metaphor, it will reveal the existence of three women from different generations, classes, and races who are being erased by Turkey’s gendered re-identification and nation-state policies.

This project floats around specifically on İpek Duben’s series of paintings called “Şerife” (1980-2), Nil Yalter’s installation titled “Rahime, Kurdish Woman from Turkey” (1972-9), and Ahu Antmen’s piece “With Love to Nezihe: Encountering the Women’s Ideal of Republican Turkey in Old Photographs Torn from Album” (2019), making room for the stories of female ghosts that haunt the history of Turkey.

While shaping this piece around the theme of spiritual ghost sisters, through three women, each work from different angles, ghosts, and fades, I will interpret Duben, Yalter, and Antmen’s attempt to break the linear temporality and bring to light what is suppressed by ghosts as “ghostly touches.”

Ultimately, I welcome spectral futurities with Dina Georgis’ (2014) concept of a “better story” and Saidiya Hartman’s (2020) “critical fabulation” on the potential of other possibilities through art in the ghostly lives of Şerife, Rahime, and Nezihe.