Pistachio Time
June 2022 - April 2023
GAZİANTEP
Pistachio Time is an art project based on the life of Ayşe, a relative of mine that lived in the village of Keklik (Zergil in Kurdish) in Gaziantep in the 1970s. At the age of 15, Ayşe falls in love with a man that works for her family and runs away with him. In the following months and even years, three relatives of hers, including my grandfather, kept looking for ways to end her life.
Özlem Köse began to delve into this story after remembering her paternal grandmother talking about it when, as a child, she used to visit her in the same village. Whenever there was trouble of any kind, whether financial or otherwise, she would blame her grandfather and say, “This is all his burden that we have to carry, that is why we’re in this situation.” It turns out that during the years when this was going on, the pistachio harvest had been very successful. However, with the money they made from the harvest, they had to pay the lawyer to get my grandfather out of prison and consequently found themselves in grave poverty.
Throughout this whole ordeal, the only person who was concerned with Ayşe’s wellbeing had been Köse's grandmother. This is an example of women’s struggle for survival, their sense of solidarity and empathy. Köse's focus with this project was to create life-affirming work against male dominance and violence towards women based on stories of her people. She listened to these women who have never been heard before and transformed their voices into words.
