Wonder Me Photobook Dummy
2014
210 x 298mm, Soft Cover, Colour Inkjet
Wonder Me dummy was created during Photobook Masterclass held by Marcus Shaden and Frédéric Lezmi and hosted by Ka in Ankara in March 2014.
GT_iP_201410, 2014
Fine Art Prints presented in Metal Suitcases, Commissioned by CI Editions
Building upon my whole body of work on gender roles, socially constructed identities and the politics of the body and my use of self-portraits, GT_iP_201410 series is the precursor of my on-going Now You See Me project. Initiated in 2014, GT_iP_201410 is based on the selfie craze, with a hint of what’s to come: The intrinsic urge to produce our most desirable representation. It is most likely safe to assume that most people have at least attempted to take a selfie, which gives direct control over one own’s representation and makes it easy to “bring the best out”. As a consequence, intimate selfies conquered the digital seduction domain in order to sexually appeal to someone as well as to self-gratify. Our smart phones, computers and digital storages are more likely full of these photographs, some our own, some sent to us…
Based on this context and the fact that, not making an exception, I have also been producing intimate selfies, the project’s early images are remakes of some of my personal snaps taking place just before or after the “climax” shots. In doing so, it forces the viewer not only to take a guess at what is going on in the image, but also to take a step back, take the omitted moments into consideration and reminds the “staged” nature of the selfie genre. Furthermore, these lo-fi, smart phones sized images refers to the celebrities’ iCloud bust in the last couple of years.
Full Contact Extended, 2013
22 x 22 cm, 50 Pages, Stitch Bound, Artist’s Book Edition of 20
Full Contact Extended was produced during Book Lab, a five-week event for the creation, production and presentation of artist’s books that took place in 2013 in Istanbul.
Book Lab was initiated by photographer and book designer Frederic Lezmi together with Istanbul gallerist Kerimcan Güleryüz.
“A book inside an existing catalogue. Literally an extension of Gözde’s series. At the time of the exhibition, she had to get rid of some of the connecting images because of the economy of space. So to get them in, we tore apart her existing catalog and stitched those images where they belonged, in between.”
Remixing the historicization of herself. An artist catalogue as an index of something that happened at a certain point in time. And as the work changes, as the artist changes, that catalogue is only a representation of something that was outdated the minute it was produced. Then, the artist editing what happened to foreshadow what can happen, only makes sense. – Merve Ünsal
Strange & Beautiful
2000 – Ongoing
This ongoing series is composed of images which have been captured since 2000 as I came together with my father, sister, and her mother who live in another city.
Strange & Beautiful series was initially displayed during Close Quarters exhibition at Istanbul Modern Museum in 2013 and produced in limited numbers. Visitors were invited to pick and take away a print each. The series was later shown at Landskrona Photo Festival‘s Focus: Turkey exhibition in 2014.
Family bonds; we are beautiful strangers in a web of resemblance.
Within reach; out of grasp.
Delicate & fragile bonds, though hard wired; strange, beautiful and close…
Strange and familiar as much as heartfelt due to proximity.
Things impossible to grasp;
like a person’s self,
like a moment,
like time passing by,
like siblings’ acute likeness,
like siblings’ acute unlikeness,
like two dots in space that get closer and closer but never meet,
like intimate distances between us and our family,
like growing up,
like growing old,
like past impressions,
like familiar scents,
like our temperament’s convergence with our parents’ as we grow old,
like falling into sleep,
like recurrent dreams,
What we are looking at here is the visualisation of this impossibility by the means of a medium that inherits and admits it.
These are traces of our union and reunions over the years as we grow. As we grow older…
Fight-Flight-Freeze
2013, Series of 27 Fine Art Prints, 3 Ed. + 1 A.P.
Fight-Flight-Freeze investigates the social, psychological and gender identity of the people practicing martial arts regarding the socially constructed fighter archetypes on a broad level.
On a personal level, it displays fight as a metaphor of a process of self-discovery and acknowledgment, the facing and overcoming intrinsic fears, coming to terms with self-harming impulses and persisting body-image issues: “You’re going to get hit. It’s about getting hit on your own terms.”
View FIGHT-FLIGHT-FREEZE exhibition.
View FIGHT-FLIGHT-FREEZE LEFTOVER NOTEBOOKS.
Break
2011, 90 x 90 cm, Diasec-mounted C-Print, 5 Ed. + 1
Break was first displayed at Contemporary Istanbul 2012 Art Fair, Istanbul/TR at The Empire Project booth.
Full Contact
2011, Photography series, 26 Archival Fine Art Print, 5 Ed. + 1
Realised during 2011 in Southeast Asia, Full Contact series focuses on two different uses of female and male bodies as a currency convertable into money and the medium and surface of the trade of money. A disposal of sexual services with blurry boundaries from go-go dancers to bar girls, from clear defined “service-charge” dualities to the simulation of long term relationships or to a seasonal work on the one hand; the traditions and lifestyle of Muay Thai fighters whose bodies are trained, tamed and moulded since early childhood on the other.
In this exchange and trade system in which money and survival reign, the bodies of those involved become the arena of pride, glory, honour, determination, rivalry, victory, defeat, potency, blood, sweat, pain, violence, pleasure and eventually some win the esteem of their families, some that of a stadium full of spectators.
Self-portrait as Joy (Bangkok)
2011, 94 x 75 cm, C-Print on metallic paper, 3 Ed. + 1 A.P.
Self-portrait as Joy (Bangkok) was first displayed at Full Art Prize exhibition in 2012, Istanbul/TR.
Pay Here series flipbook (self-portrait)
2010, Edition of 500
Published in Istanbul in 2010 by Too Many Books.
Included in Photoireland’s The Library Project‘s collections.
Pay Here series flipbook (pole dancing)
2011, Edition of 500
Published in Istanbul in 2011 by Too Many Books.
Included in Photoireland’s The Library Project‘s collections.
Pay Here artist’s books
2010, 2 Volumes, 21 x 14.8 cm
Volume 1: hand-glued photo prints, Volume 2: script-like essay
Edition of 50, signed and numbered
Published in Istanbul in 2010 by Too Many Books.
Included in Reminders Photography Stronghold Photobook Library and Asia Art Archive‘s collection in Tokyo/JP.
Read Pay Here artist’s books Volume 2 here.
Pay Here
2010, Photography Series of 20 C-Prints, 5 Ed. + 1 A.P.
The audience & the subject, the exhibitionist & the voyeur, the sadist & the masochist are the most crucial polarisations that can be defined in the woman – man relationship axis. The tension created by this power relation between the genders was what initially promted Gözde Türkkan to an inner search to reconcile her own sexual role and identity.
“Pay Here” is the title of Türkkan’s project on gender politics, which she finds appealing as much as it is compelling, acknowledging that it is only partially true to establish the sides as subject: woman & viewer: man. Photographs taking place in the series represent the slim in-between gap where Türkkan can face her inner conflicts and make peace with her gender role. The artists describes this in-between area as: “The pole-dancing photographs especially provide this because they are carried out in a venue that is outside expectations/stereotypes. In addition, the women who are aware of the objectification that comes with the dance, neither exploit it aggressively nor let themselves be exploited.”
Türkkan’s approach, aims to break the common beliefs and perspectives without asserting that the point of view in this series is the only truth. The artists thinks that it is a complex situation and one view point cannot explain the whole.
I was looking to see if you were looking back at me to see me looking back at you Artist’s Book Dummy
36 x 29 cm, 104 pages, Colour Offset Print
Please contact reachme [@] mimiko.net to request a private view or preview.
I was looking to see if you were looking back at me to see me looking back at you
2008, Series of 15 Fine Art Prints
2 sizes available, 3 Ed. + 1 A.P each size
I was looking to see if you were looking back at me to see me looking back at you series is one of my initial works on the exploration and externalisation of my female gaze upon both my own gender and the opposite one. Photography seems to be the most adequate tool as it allows me some sort of libidinal release regardless of the object of the photographs. Furthermore self-portraiting is likely an act of autoeroticism. Hence this whole work is an attempt of self-satisfaction, an act of autoeroticism to many extends.
Pudica
2007, Photography series of 7 prints
93 x 140 cm, Archival Fine Art Print, 3 Ed. + 1 A.P
Pudica Special Box Set
2010, 28 x 42 cm
Archival Fine Art Print, 20 Ed. + 2 A.P.
Pudica is an autoerotic self-portrait series.
This series was realized as part of an initial attempt of exploration and externalization of my female gaze on both myself as a female and the opposite sex.
It is meant to allude to the paradoxes of self-objectification, as the pudica gesture’s interpretation as masturbation rather than a modest concealment.
Pudica#3 was exhibited at Contemporary Istanbul’10 and Pudica#3 and Pudica#5 were exhibited at Art HK’11 Hong Kong Art Fair 2011.
Please contact reachme [@] mimiko.net to request a private view or a preview of PUDICA series.
Untitled #1 (Uncanny) & Untitled #2 (Uncanny)
2006, 56 x 70 cm, Archival Fine Art Print, 3 Ed. + 1 A.P.
Untitled #1 & Untitled #2 were first displayed at Tanıdık Rahatsızlıklar group exhibition in 2014 in Istanbul/TR.
21
2005, 21 pieces of original Polaroid prints, Unique Edition
21 was first displayed at Contemporary Istanbul 2014 Art Fair, Istanbul, TR at The Empire Project booth.
Untitled #3
2005, 32 x 40 cm, Archival Pigment Print on Fine Art Paper, 3 Ed. + 1 A.P.
Untitled #3 was first displayed at Tanıdık Rahatsızlıklar group exhibition in 2014 at Galeri Artist Çukurcuma, Istanbul/TR.
Şükran / Gratitude
26.12.2004-19.08.2005
198 pieces of Polaroid 780, 159 x 118 cm (8.8 x 10.7 cm each), Unique
Gratitude is what her name meant. Gratitude is what I felt for her and I wanted her to know that.
I have not much to say.
I did not take the last photograph.
If I did, I would have been a different person now; or maybe I would have taken it if I were a different person.
That nonexistent photograph became one of my “decisive moments”.
The last photograph is absent, the same way she is. Maybe that’s the whole story.
