Memory of the Other
September 2023 - June 2024
ISTANBUL
Women's Works Library Information Center Foundation (KEKBMV) is a Women's Memory Center where all women's productions in the Ottoman and Republican period in various fields such as literature, music, painting, academy, etc are kept as well as the private archives of these women. KEKBMV archives not only women's productions but also the memory of the Feminist Women's Movement, and digitally stores documents such as texts, posters and brochures of all activism activities. KEKBMV, where this archive is kept, is the unique and only Women's Library in our country, to which the academy, press, students and civil initiatives conducting women's research can refer. KEKBMV has so far only been the guardian of the memory of Turkish women.
However, migration, which is one of the most important problems of our world today, has changed and transformed Anatolia, which is a transit point, as well as our lives. The main subject of the project is to create an exhibition documenting the stories of 5 immigrant women artists, who came to Turkey as immigrants and continue all their artistic production in our country, and how immigration changed their art and lives, and to transfer the content of this exhibition to our digital memory.
Video footage of these 5 female artists telling their own stories were displayed in the exhibition. Both examples of their artistic production and personal belongings that they were able to preserve despite migration were exhibited. The aim was to create an exhibition narrative that sheds light on questions such as the dark side of the reality of immigration that deeply affects lives, the different impact areas of being an immigrant woman, and how immigration affects their art. In the exhibition book, academic experts, who have worked on migration and women, were invited to write articles and some light was shed on the socio-political background of migration issue.
