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DEPO INVITES AUDIENCE TO THINK ABOUT TURKEY'S ARMENIANS, PAST AND PRESENT
Today's Zaman, Turkey
April 10 2015
April 10, 2015, Friday/ 16:34:41/
by RUMEYSA KIGER / ISTANBUL
A new exhibition at the Depo art and culture center in Ä°stanbul by
artists Nalan Yırtmac and Anti-Pop points a finger at the brutality
experienced by Armenian people living in the Ottoman Empire and
in Turkey.
On display since April 4 on the first floor of Depo in the Tophane
neighborhood, "Without knowing where we are headed..." invites the
audience to reflect on both the past and the present day.
The exhibition is made up of portraits of 100 Armenian intellectuals
who were among the more than 200 significant figures from the Armenian
community who were arrested on April 24, 1915, upon the order of
Talat Pasha, the interior minister of the time.
These intellectuals, most of whom were arrested in Ä°stanbul one day
before the Allied landings in Canakkale (Gallipoli), were taken to
two concentration camps in Cankırı and AyaÅ~_, near Ankara.
According to the exhibition catalogue, "These arrests constitute the
first step of the Committee of Union and Progress government's decision
of deportation, which soon evolved into genocide. Following the arrest
of approximately 250 people [starting] the night of the April 23 and
lasting through April 24, a massive police operation was set in motion
targeting 2,500 people over the course of a couple of days."
Yırtmac picked 100 of these opinion leaders and made new portraits
of them. "This work pulls them out from under the generic heading of
'arrested and cast-out Armenians' and turns them into people with
familiar names and faces, the active participants of the cosmopolitan
Ottoman intellectual milieu," she explains in the catalogue.
She produced the portraits in her own language based on photographs
from the few publications that have survived to present day.
On the wall right across from the portraits, another powerful work
by Anti-Pop links these killings with a recent one, the assassination
of Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink in 2007.
"The work created by Anti-Pop immediately after the assassination of
Hrant Dink on Jan. 19, 2007 is exhibited alongside these portraits,
drawing attention to the agonizing continuity between 1915 and the
massacre of Dink. On one side there are intellectuals arrested and
killed 100 years ago, and on the other a revolutionary who paid with
his life only a few years ago for believing that Turks and Armenians
would reconstruct their own identities on healthy grounds and live
in equality and freedom," the artists explain.
The show aims at coming to terms with the great catastrophe experienced
in the Ottoman state and Turkey, "to bow our heads and mourn together,"
they say.
A letter dated May 30, 1915 written by an Armenian prisoner at
the AyaÅ~_ camp, Sımpas Purad, is also featured in the show's
catalogue. It reads: "Last week, from among us, Agnuni, Khajag,
Zartaryan, Cangulyan, Dagavaryan and Sarkis Minasyan were summoned
by Ankara and they set on the road. We do not know their whereabouts
now. I grieve, because although we suffered so much hardship under
the autocratic regime, we are still being unjustly persecuted in
this era of freedom and constitutionalism. Was this the fortune to
befall those who suffered and toiled for the sake of the motherland
all those years?"
Journalist, political activist and educator Karekin Khajag also wrote
to her wife and family: "My Dear, They're sending me far, so far away
from you, towards Dikranagert [Diyarbakır]. With me, are the following
prisoners of AyaÅ~_: Agnuni, Zartar, Sarkis Minasyan, Dr. Dagavaryan
and Cihangul. At the Eregli train station, I met an Armenian who
promised me to deliver this letter to you. Look after yourself and my
girls Nunus and Alos well. We don't know why they brought us here,
but I have great hope that we will see each other once again. So,
goodbye, I'm kissing you and my sweet girls. Yours, K. Khajag."
"Without knowing where we are headed..." will continue until April
26 at Depo. For more information, visit www.depoistanbul.net,
www.anti-pop.com and nalanyirtmac.blogspot.com.tr.
http://www.todayszaman.com/arts-culture_depo-invites-audience-to-think-about-turkeys-armenians-past-and-present_377641.html
Today's Zaman, Turkey
April 10 2015
April 10, 2015, Friday/ 16:34:41/
by RUMEYSA KIGER / ISTANBUL
A new exhibition at the Depo art and culture center in Ä°stanbul by
artists Nalan Yırtmac and Anti-Pop points a finger at the brutality
experienced by Armenian people living in the Ottoman Empire and
in Turkey.
On display since April 4 on the first floor of Depo in the Tophane
neighborhood, "Without knowing where we are headed..." invites the
audience to reflect on both the past and the present day.
The exhibition is made up of portraits of 100 Armenian intellectuals
who were among the more than 200 significant figures from the Armenian
community who were arrested on April 24, 1915, upon the order of
Talat Pasha, the interior minister of the time.
These intellectuals, most of whom were arrested in Ä°stanbul one day
before the Allied landings in Canakkale (Gallipoli), were taken to
two concentration camps in Cankırı and AyaÅ~_, near Ankara.
According to the exhibition catalogue, "These arrests constitute the
first step of the Committee of Union and Progress government's decision
of deportation, which soon evolved into genocide. Following the arrest
of approximately 250 people [starting] the night of the April 23 and
lasting through April 24, a massive police operation was set in motion
targeting 2,500 people over the course of a couple of days."
Yırtmac picked 100 of these opinion leaders and made new portraits
of them. "This work pulls them out from under the generic heading of
'arrested and cast-out Armenians' and turns them into people with
familiar names and faces, the active participants of the cosmopolitan
Ottoman intellectual milieu," she explains in the catalogue.
She produced the portraits in her own language based on photographs
from the few publications that have survived to present day.
On the wall right across from the portraits, another powerful work
by Anti-Pop links these killings with a recent one, the assassination
of Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink in 2007.
"The work created by Anti-Pop immediately after the assassination of
Hrant Dink on Jan. 19, 2007 is exhibited alongside these portraits,
drawing attention to the agonizing continuity between 1915 and the
massacre of Dink. On one side there are intellectuals arrested and
killed 100 years ago, and on the other a revolutionary who paid with
his life only a few years ago for believing that Turks and Armenians
would reconstruct their own identities on healthy grounds and live
in equality and freedom," the artists explain.
The show aims at coming to terms with the great catastrophe experienced
in the Ottoman state and Turkey, "to bow our heads and mourn together,"
they say.
A letter dated May 30, 1915 written by an Armenian prisoner at
the AyaÅ~_ camp, Sımpas Purad, is also featured in the show's
catalogue. It reads: "Last week, from among us, Agnuni, Khajag,
Zartaryan, Cangulyan, Dagavaryan and Sarkis Minasyan were summoned
by Ankara and they set on the road. We do not know their whereabouts
now. I grieve, because although we suffered so much hardship under
the autocratic regime, we are still being unjustly persecuted in
this era of freedom and constitutionalism. Was this the fortune to
befall those who suffered and toiled for the sake of the motherland
all those years?"
Journalist, political activist and educator Karekin Khajag also wrote
to her wife and family: "My Dear, They're sending me far, so far away
from you, towards Dikranagert [Diyarbakır]. With me, are the following
prisoners of AyaÅ~_: Agnuni, Zartar, Sarkis Minasyan, Dr. Dagavaryan
and Cihangul. At the Eregli train station, I met an Armenian who
promised me to deliver this letter to you. Look after yourself and my
girls Nunus and Alos well. We don't know why they brought us here,
but I have great hope that we will see each other once again. So,
goodbye, I'm kissing you and my sweet girls. Yours, K. Khajag."
"Without knowing where we are headed..." will continue until April
26 at Depo. For more information, visit www.depoistanbul.net,
www.anti-pop.com and nalanyirtmac.blogspot.com.tr.
http://www.todayszaman.com/arts-culture_depo-invites-audience-to-think-about-turkeys-armenians-past-and-present_377641.html