Basket Sketch for Womb (Time Moves in One Direction), 2023-2024
Silver wire; cordage made of dandelions collected with my son, printed clause of 1923 Lausanne Convention regarding the compulsory population exchange between Greece and Turkey, raffia, threads from Turkish flag, green laundry rope, my grandmother’s hair, thin silver wire
20x12x8’’

Dandelions that were collected with my 7 year old son were woven using the cordage technique, where each strand twists around itself and simultaneously around each other, holding each other in place with friction. Other materials were added in to cordage strands, and pure silver wire was woven through the materials to create a structure that resembles a womb/stomach/bladder.

“Basket Sketch for Womb (Time Moves in One Direction) is perhaps a smaller and less public ‘stomach’ within the majestic stomach-space of the gallery. It chews on and swallows bits and pieces of a rather personal history: a bunch of dandelions and other materials such as hair, red wool, threads from the Turkish flag, and the articles of the Treaty of Lausanne on the 1923 population exchange between Turkey and Greece, which functioned to ‘purify’ the nation at the founding moment of the state. A family’s past and its untold memories, stately symbols, and words are woven together using the cordage technique, which keeps the woven strings strongly together by creating friction between the two ends of the rope. The basket is made up of violent and compassionate memories of the past, but we do not know what is going on inside, what is being digested, or what will come out of the process of ingestion. Hope lies therein. “ Begüm Özden Fırat, The Garden of Undigested Experiences