Yerine / In Lieu, 2020-2022
Handmade paper with black cord and printed sentences from personal notes taken after Suruç and Ankara bombings

In Lieu features “documents” ie. letter-size sheets of handmade paper with embedded marks that carry references to text.The starting point for this series was the 2015 Suruç and Ankara bombings in Turkey, which killed many young civilians who had congregated for peaceful protest, and marked a strict turn towards a securitarian state. I felt unable to speak or write about these bombings in any way that made sense, and ended up with email drafts, voice recordings, fragmented notes and unsent social media posts that didn’t make it out into the world. Shortly after this, a Status of Emergency declared in Turkey made it possible for the government to publish “KHK”s - spontaneous decrees that replaced law. The works in this series explore the dual aspects of language - how it generates and destroys, complicates and flattens, orders and messes up, and creates sense and makes no sense at all.

Related works: In Lieu 2021-2022