Who are you? How did you get here? Are you alive? Here? There? Do you work? Are
you rich or poor? Home or refugees? My head was filled with these questions when I
opened a black plastic bag at a street vendor’s booth in the flea market in Istanbul.
“How much is this?” I asked the vendor in my broken Turkish, I, who fled to this land
filled with the faces, laughter, triumphs, and defeats of other people. He told me to pay as much as I wanted and take the entire bag. He seemed eager to get rid of a bag full of people and stories that no longer interests anybody.
I went back to my room, I looked at the strangers’ faces. I spoke with them. I gave them names and wove their stories until I could almost smell the wooden box where my mother kept the family photos in our house in Damascus. That’s when the game began.Since the invention of the camera, the world of art underwent a great transition; one that German philosopher, Walter Benjamin, spoke about, stating that in the age of photography, a work of art is now responsible for recreating reality in a new way. But what reality is that? Our reality is currently a series of images we create over and over through a conventional lens. It is as if we can’t believe what we see unless “others” give us their take on it, unless mass media presented it to us. Therefore, we never truly see the picture. We only see it through a specific lens from a specific point of view. This body of work is an attempt to shatter the lens. People in these photographs were removed from their environment. The historical and cultural context of the existence was then manipulated to create a more sincere if at times harsher context to view them through. Would it be possible to remove the filter that colors our eyes and views on reality? A
question like this could lead to dangerous places. Ones that may destroy the world we created in our heads. But the danger isn’t in destruction. It’s in admitting that the ruins exist. We live in a world full of devastation and violence, of death and forced migration. Fear can at times surround our dreams and waking hours while all along we walk a thin line between the image and the imagination. I wanted to tell my story. I created it through the faces and bodies of strangers. Then, those strangers traveled to you through the mail to play your favorite game; to make you ask
questions even they don’t know the answer to. They will now sit still on the walls and
listen intently.
Exhibition at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
USA