Aylin Kızıl
ALL THAT IS COLLECTED IN OUR CORNER OF THE WORLD
Home is a physical and imaginary place. On one hand, it’s a symbol of order and trust, on the other hand, it’s the place and the metaphor of the subconscious and imagination. In this regard, it’s not only a physical and visible being but also a sensorial and sensual one. As Doreen Massey, a scholar of feminist geography and cultural geography, puts it: ''what we call 'home' today and here is where our life trajectories and stories until now converge.'' (*) In a similar manner, the places we deem a roof over our heads today are the places that continue living with the stories of those who were there before us.
I always got emotional when I had to leave my home. I collect the spirit of the place that welcomed me with open arms as memories. In my mother’s absence, I have deeply felt the effect of her gaze in the intimacy I developed with home. The home that traded places with sound, color, language, body, smells, and things transformed into something more vulnerable, without roots and undefinable with those who had to carry them elsewhere overnight. On one hand, the identity of the home created new meanings, on the other, identities were reshaped with homes. Home, while building identities, grew by being constructed by these identities.
Until now, I have photographed nomadism with curiosity. Photography not only paved the way to meet people and get to know myself better, but also turned into a journey on its own. Through this project, I wanted to reach out to women with experience of migration. Upon my request, my project partner Eyhan posed the question ‘what’s home?’ to Kurdish women in her neighborhood, who have migrated to İzmir - just like her. Eyhan focused on the emotions, senses, atmosphere, concept, traces, images, and places in how they conceived home. As Eyhan searched for the reflection of home in the language of photography, the women were asked to place themselves within the thing that makes home. In the end, ‘in our corner of the world’, in ‘our first universe’ (**), and the things that amassed in those houses came to life as images in the photographs who have not found their names yet.
(*) Doreen Massey, ‘Space, Place and Gender’, University of Minnesota Press, 1994
(**) “Our house is our corner of the world. As has often been said, it is our first universe”, Gaston Bachelard, 'Poetics of Space', Beacon Press, 1992
PROJECT TEAM: AYLİN KIZIL (DİYARBAKIR) & EYHAN ÇELİK (İZMİR)
