Artist Didem Özbek Focuses On Obstacles, Overcoming Obstacles

Known for her multi-layered projects bringing people from various disciplines together, artist Didem Özbek is currently exhibiting a solo show which delves into the obstacles an individual faces in the worlds of art and sports at Galeri Zilberman's project space in İstiklal street's Mısır Apartmanı.

Her exhibition, titled “Propulsion,” is part of a series called “Red Flag / Blue Flag / White Flag,” which has been in production since 2012. As an artist who works with dictionaries at times, Özbek checked the meaning of the word “exhibition” in the Turkish Language Association (TDK) dictionary. The first entry was about a display of fruit and vegetables, and the reference sentence was from a story by early 20th-century Turkish short story writer Sait Faik Abasıyanık, which Özbek was able to locate in an issue of Kurun newspaper published May 20, 1936. Eventually the whole newspaper excited the artist more than Abasıyanık's short story, which was about an artist who wanted to hold an exhibit of their still life paintings of watermelons, and who found a patron to cover the production costs.

“Abasıyanık was a prominent figure involved in the art circles of the time, and I believe his story was a critique of that field. It was an era when still life paintings of watermelons and other things were quite popular. He also explains the problems of production the artist experienced, and what kind of personal networks were required to put on an exhibition,” Özbek explained in an interview with Today's Zaman.

Apart from the story, the fact that most of the news articles published at that time are still very relevant to topics currently discussed in Turkey was also very interesting to the artist. “It was as if our lives had been squeezed into a day and as if we have been stuck in the same day for years. That was the panic I had when I first read the newspaper. Issues related to the city planning of İstanbul, which included changes to Taksim Square, the changing education system, the May 19 celebrations and financial relations between Turkey and European countries were all featured in the newspaper,” Özbek said. Later on she printed 1,000 copies of that newspaper, organized a series of lectures delving into those fields, created art objects related to the watermelon story and gave the name “Red Flag” to her project.

“Since the [1936] newspaper was published just a day after the May 19 Youth and Sports Day celebrations, which took place in Taksim's Topçu Barracks, there were six full pages of photographs showing young people supporting the system. Seventy-seven years later, young people gathered at the same place, this time to criticize the system,” she said, referring to 2013's nationwide Gezi Park protests, which began in May 2013 in the park that now replaces the barracks.

Following this period, like many people in the country whose hopes were crushed, Özbek took a break from her artistic production, and she decided to join a swimming competition. After a very rigorous training process, she succeeded in joining the Boğaziçi Intercontinental Swimming Competition and finally reached her goal of swimming across the Bosporus in a year.

During her training, she met a group of İstanbulites who swim along the Bosporus around the neighborhood of Aşiyan. “During that year, I witnessed how the fields of art and sports are very similar to each other, how competition is very significant in both and how competitors try to demoralize each other using psychological methods. I also met people who swim just for the joy, who think the Bosporus is the cleanest and most beautiful place on Earth to swim. With their encouragement, I once again began to think about artistic projects, which, this time, would take place near the Bosporus,” Özbek explained.

Eventually she found herself writing petitions to bureaucratic institutions such as the municipality or the Directorate of Parks and Gardens in order to get permission for public projects. Her “Blue Flag” project could not be realized, as the municipality sent the artist a two-word decision after dozens of pieces of formal correspondence, stating that her request had been denied.

This denial eventually led the artist to create her current show at Galeri Zilberman, titled “Propulsion,” which features a seemingly endless sandbank made of sandpaper. While the material points to the hardship of surviving in the worlds of art and sports, and also the hardship of making demands and not getting what you want in life, the image of a vast beach conveys the endless obstacles one encounters in life. However, the installation should not be considered a pessimistic one since the English text inscription Özbek used in her work, which she called “White Flag,” cites a motivational quote from Plato, used in a speech given by Diana Nyad, the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without the use of a shark cage.

“Propulsion” also features two video pieces, one depicting creative ways of using public space and the other depicts confronting one's fears.

The exhibition will continue until May 2 at Galeri Zilberman in Taksim.

Rumeysa Kiger, İstanbul (Cihan/Today's Zaman)