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The Land of The Disappeared

Multimedia Installation: Prints, phone equipped with motion sensor, sculpture


Exhibition View




Photographs

A mass grave known as Newala Qesaba. Siirt, Turkey.
 A landscape from the infamous route known as "The Road to Death”. Sirnak, Turkey.
The tigris river, where some of the bodies of the disappeared were found. Diyarbakir, Turkey.
A heavily guarded facility recognized as one of the locations where the forcibly disappeared were buried. Sirnak, Turkey.


The Land of the Disappeared is a multimedia installation about enforced disappearances in Turkey. The disappearances began after the military coup d’état in 1980 and continued for the next two decades. During this period, the Turkish military committed extensive human rights violations against its citizens. Most of the disappeared were politicians, local Kurdish community leaders, or people with left-wing political views, although in truth anyone could go missing, and no one was safe.

This work creates a parallel world where the ways we think about the living, the dead, and the usual meaning of things begin to crack, and where seemingly ordinary objects and places become something else.

The installation is built around objects and places connected to enforced disappearances. The white Renault 12 is notorious for its role in abductions and is instantly recognisable as a symbol of state violence.

The photographs are the landscapes that are associated with the disapperead: a mass graveyard, river banks, bridges, and a road known as the “death road”. The photographs were taken in four Kurdish cities. They are printed on white paper with layers of varnish, appear white from afar but reveal different details under varying light angles when viewed up close. 

The old phone represents families awaiting news of -or from- their loved ones, yet it also serves as a tool of government intimidation, reminding them to remain silent. It is equipped with a motion sensor which begins to ring whenever someone is near.

No precise and final figure has emerged for the number of people that were forcibly disappeared in Turkey, but according to the Truth and Justice Foundation the total number of the disappeared is 1,353. To this day families continue to search for their loved ones.