İhsan Oturmak, a young artist who creates his world of paintings with themes
from Anatolian multiculturalism, militarism, education and punishment,
opened his first personal exhibition "Three Flawed Operations: Tribe, School,
Civilization" in Depo- Istanbul last month. We have talked with Oturmak
about his exhibition, the relation of the "powerful" with "school" and what kind
of "civilization" is being built on this...
What is the starting point for Three Flawed Operations: Tribe, School,
Civilization?
İhsan Oturmak: First of all, I was curious about myself and my position in society.
When I started to think about these things, especially when I was studying at the
university, I was witness to transformations that the people from Anatolia were undergoing.
They are confronted with quite a different culture when they first come to Istanbul. I was
trying to make sense of the transformation they experienced in the course of adapting to this
culture. The person wants to get camouflaged in order to escape from the attention in this
new place with a new culture. Pretending to be somone else allows her to escape attention;
therefore she can take on a new identity by making herself accepted as such. After a while I
felt like I needed to explore my questions further. While I was examining this process, I
thought this might have something to do with childhood. People are first motivated to
change at an early age, although it becomes evident only as they grow older. I tried to reflect
back upon the past in regard to my own life, and reached the conclusion that such a
transformation might possibly be related with primary school education. Then I started
to explore primary schools.
How did these ideas initially reveal themselves in your paintings?
There is a parallell between what I think, feel and live and the works I create. And this is
precisely what I try to do, although sometimes I only realize the implications if it after a while.
When I happen to be in a city I just live the athmosphere of the city but I don’t realize the
influence it has on me. I need to have a look at it from another city at another time in order to
grasp the athmosphere there. I was in a routine in the place where I was living. I was unaware
of what I was living. Once I moved from the region, once it became a long time ago, only then
was I able to grasp the situation I had been in at the time. As the setting changed, I started to
remember how I had spent time with my family and to think about my old neighborhood. I
started to remember my friends, the school I used to skip, the classes I had, the children I had
quarrels with; indeed, I started to remember everything. That is how I came to develope a
curiosity for the past. Once I developed this curiosity, I have seen its unavoidable influence in
my works.
You are from Diyarbakır. What was Diyarbakır like when you were in your
formative years at school?
I started school three times in my life. First, I started the school like every other child when I
reached school-age. But that year the school was shut down indefinitely for political reasons. I
ended up leaving. I am talking about the 1990s. We moved to the Benusen neighborhood in
Diyarbakır. This time, after starting school at 15 I decided I didn’t want to attend anymore and
dropped out. Later on, at the persistent request of my family, I re-enrolled and did not quit
until I had completed my university education. When I started the first grade in primary school
I was almost 10 years old. When I graduated to third grade in primary school my peers had
started to wear a new school uniform because they had started secondary school. I started to
develop a fear of the primary school uniform as a result. When I graduated to middle school,
they were already high school students.
How did you discover your talent for painting amid all that turmoil?
I did not discover it; I had always drawn pictures. It was the simplest way to express myself. I
have been drawing pictures ever since I could remember whenever I could find a pencil and a
piece of paper.
How did your teachers realized your talent?
I had a painting teacher when I was in secondary school. He also worked on his paintings at
home, and then he would usually bring his oil paintings to the school to complete them
together with the students. I become acquainted with oil painting thanks to his first
recommendations regarding the material. My first painting was a view from a snowy farm. It
was the first time when I realized I could use paint. It fueled my passion for learning about
painting. I was not a lazy student. On the contrary, I was successful at school. But as soon as I
found out there was a fine arts high school in Diyarbakır, somehow I ended up there.
Dialog between portraits, Order (afore). Urheber: hbs. All rights reserved.From the end of 1990s towards early 200s, how was it like to be a
student at the High School of Fine Arts?
Studying at the High School of Fine Arts is quite different. It is a school which
is not integrated into the rest of Diyarbakır. Other schools have the atmosphere
of a subculture that is different from the political atmosphere in Diyarbakır.
The background to that subculture is constituted by those who migrated from
rural areas to the city. This subculture has an influence on the life and education
there. But the everyday life is determined pretty much by the political
atmosphere. Of course it is common to see the people from the majority society,
but the High School of Fine Arts is a more sophisticated school when you
compare it to others. After all, most of the students are not natives of the city;
they are mostly children of teachers or of military families. It is quite something
in Diyarbakır to have a school where you can hear the piano. Everything is
beautiful, music, painting... But it is quite a long way from the reality in
Diyarbakır. It was really fascinating when I first started there. I was aware that
I was getting to know a different culture. I knew I liked painting. I wanted to
learn how to paint;I wanted it with all my heart and soul. I also looked at
painting as a way to escape from life. I was starting to open a door and find a
way for myself before I even knew it.
Turkish is not a language of emotion for you, and art is a field where
emotions prevail. How this split in emotions reflected in your
paintings?
Painting has no language; it has no religion or faith. It is simply about your way
of perceiving the visual world. After all, I am not the kind of person who can
express himself verbally, but I realized that I could express myself visually. I
speak Turkish with an accent; I can not speak Kurdish very well, either.
Painting is now the language I can speak best.
Among important elements that compose Three Flawed Operations
are the photographs you have collected, right?
My curiosity about past prompted me, in time, to get interested in photographs.
I started to get to know people through photographs. How did people live? In
what ways did they continue their existence in society? At first, I did not pay
attention to the notes written behind the photographs but in time they also
became a part of the work. I was collecting photographs of ordinary people from
everywhere. A photograph from 1940s, for instance, Fatma, an Armenian girl....
I was interested in photographs of children taken at schools. It took two years to
collect all the photographs, and I still continue to collect. You can get an idea
about different periods in time thanks to these photographs. A book may write
about the 1970s or 1990s as the good old times but photographs do not tell the
same thing. I find the expressions and words of individual persons in
photographs to be realistic. There is a girl next to two children in a photograph
taken in a classroom. But she wrote the note behind when she was 24. She writes:
“To my surprise, our teacher was a communist...” What matters from my point
of view are the minds of children whom I come across in photographs, and the
environments in which they grew up.
You explored village schools for a long time. What did you look for
in village schools?
I did not know what to look for in schools before I got there. Sometimes, I felt
curious about a closed school and wanted to take a look at it. Sometimes, I
ended up painting pictures of children at schools I went to. I have visited tens
of schools in Batman, Diyarbakır, Siirt and Mardin. While there, I was on the
look out for historical things, and sometimes the names caught my attention.
For instance, there is a village called Heştdêr, which literally means Eight
Churches. Once there must have been eight churches in that village where, of
course, there are ruins of the churches but nothing more. In another place, the
village cemetery was next to an Armenian cemetery. These are small pieces of
information you are confronted with anytime you walk around.
How did this laboratory of history and photographs take you back to
the Abdulhamid period?
I realized something about the education policies of 1930s. There were some
local strategies of schooling as well as universal ones. I came to realize this fact
when I was visiting village schools. I thought about the possibility that there
could be other schools practicing similar strategies that I was looking for, such
as what I found on reading cards, writings, chalk drawings and even in how
people spoke. However, I never even considered that there could be such a
school before the republican period. Needless to say, the number of visual
objects that I could find outside decreased in this period, and naturally I felt it
necessary to explore libraries. While I was researching about the Hamidiye
Cavalry [Hamidiye Alayları], I learned that a tribal chieftain affiliated with the
cavalry sent Abdulhamid a telegram asking why their children were not
enrolled in the Imperial Tribal School [Mekteb-i Aşiret-i Hümayun] in İstanbul.
Upon that telegram, children of wealthy families from the tribes were also
enrolled in this school established by Abdulhamid in 1892. This school was
established by the Ottoman State for the purpose of consolidating its relations
with the tribes in order to maintain control over the territories it was holding in
the face of a great loss of territory. The period of study in that school was 15
years, and nearly 50 students graduated each year. It was a school for the
children of families who held power in the local tribes.
I do not want to play, Alphabet reform and repetition (on the wall). Urheber: hbs. All rights reserved.Why is the title of the exhibition is Three Flawed Operations? What
is the story behind the name?
When I named the exhibition, I took the problems which had flaws at their
heart as the departure point. I was especially inspired by the education
terminology used: “input-operation-output.” When I realized that the motive to
train is the basis for all social organizations, I came to understand that this
phenomenon was more of an issue of control than being a matter of discipline.
To me, it was not possible to ignore the aspects like the local objectives of such
control as well as its universal practices. While this is a condition continuing
through the recent past into the present, it also has a history in Ottoman period.
Therefore, we can say that by defining the tribes and territories as “input,”
school [mekteb] as an “operation” and civilization as an “output,” I tried to
prove, so to speak, that the central issue was control.
Graduates of those schools returned home as prominent figures of
their society. Now you memorialize them through your paintings.
Who are the people that you have portrayed? Who were these
people?
The objective of the Tribal School was to imbue the tribal students with loyalty
to the Ottoman State and to preserve the territories of these tribes. The
imbuing of loyalty proved to be efficient for a while; however, later on some
figures show negative responses. During my efforts to understand the school, I
found out that opposing figures had continued to remain at the forefront just
as they once were at school. Cibranlı Halit was the leading figure among all of
them. He established an organization against the state. His activities attracted
attention and he was killed. There are similar stories of figures like Molla Hıdır
and Hayri Bey. I wanted to deliberate on these oppositional figures in one of
my latest works Aferin. How does it become possible that the very person you
have tried to make loyal turns out to be a person who is not wanted in the end?
This was the question I was curious about. So I tried to understand the
situation of reaction, that is, the opposition.
There was a modern curriculum in that school apart from the
religious education. What kind of activities, for example, allowed
them to rise to prominence after the political figures in your
portraits returned home?
They got organized. The power of their organization increased so much that it
had the potential to become harmful to the existing power structure of the
period. And certainly there were other tribes that could have followed in their
footsteps. This situation could not have been pleasant for those in power in that
period, considering that all those tribes could conceivably organize a collective
action.
Renewal. Urheber: hbs. All rights reserved.What do the words “school” and “civilization” mean to you now
after all that work?
I have a different opinion now; I regard “school” more as a space of operation
than a place. Also, I think of “civilization” as a method of control. In fact, I
have seen these concepts used as instruments.
There is a certain melancholy in the pictures. Children or adults
dressed in uniforms...
In my work, I was initially using colors that had less grey. However, as my
ideas and outlook on life changed, grey and tones of grey have come to the
forefront. I also realized that these tones have an impact on the expressions of
people. When I applied this distinction, I also felt distanced from the painting.
And it makes me feel good that way. I am not in reality; I just pretend to be.
So, in what ways has being an educator contributed to this story?
I believed I could be an educator after finishing school but I did not know I
would produce works on education (laughs). I can say that I practiced the
teaching profession in my own paintings. To be active in a field I had
comprehensive knowledge about allowed me to minimize what I had to learn.
After all, it can be a good thing to know answers from the start.
Mosul, Jerusalem, Basra, Aleppo, Diyarbakır, Baghdad in time. Charcoal drawing.. Urheber: hbs. All rights reserved.Also, you give painting lessons to the prisoners. What kind of an
experience is that?
It is a different experience, just like the experience I have gained from visiting
village schools. You do not know where it is going to take you, and even so you
want to try it. I go to the penitentiary twice a week for 16 hours in total. We
turned a prison ward into a workshop. I am very curious about the sense of
restriction. We are already restricted in life outside but the prison creates a
more concentrated experience of that. When you teach painting there, you have
a camera on the ceiling and you are under the surveillance of a guardian. While
I was teaching, I wanted to experience surveillance and of being attentive to my
behavior. This is in fact an aggravated form of what we already live in the
outside world. We feel terrible whenever we feel restricted. When one enters a
place like that, on the other hand, the level of restriction rises to the point that
it is a complete experience. You feel inevitably free when you leave the place
even though you are not free. As the pressure is increased, you perceive the
lower level of pressure as freedom whereas you are controlled in both cases.
The number of my students varies each year. We can not have long-run studies
because the convicts are transferred from one prison to another so frequently.
They love producing beadwork and other arabesque work like that. I think this
stems naturally from their visual memories. First of all, I tried to eliminate that
culture because it has rendered them quite ordinary, and also has had a
negative psychological influence on them. They grow a lot; if you spend seven
months with a student, you produce a really beautiful work.
