Who were they?
2016,
digital print,
ink and fingerprint,
90x135 cm
2016,
digital print,
ink and fingerprint,
90x135 cm
‘Who were
they?’ is
a photograph of the children of Sur, who lost their family and friends and
were forced to move from their homes because of the curfew that was announced in Diyarbakir, Sur
county in December of 2015. By obscuring the children's faces with fingerprints, my intervention
meant to turn them into geographical subjects rather than being a symbol of disidentification.
Even though the text on the wall ‘Yurtsever Devrimci Gençlik Hareketi’ (The Patriotic Revolutionary
Youth Movement) was written by the youth of my generation who chose to fight, the children
chose to pose in front of the text which became a symbol concerning their future. To have lived
through the same losses as the children, as a Kurdish artist who was forced to migrate, the work
‘Who were they?’ is the untaken childhood photograph of my generation; the current and future
photograph of an endless war, pain and anger.
were forced to move from their homes because of the curfew that was announced in Diyarbakir, Sur
county in December of 2015. By obscuring the children's faces with fingerprints, my intervention
meant to turn them into geographical subjects rather than being a symbol of disidentification.
Even though the text on the wall ‘Yurtsever Devrimci Gençlik Hareketi’ (The Patriotic Revolutionary
Youth Movement) was written by the youth of my generation who chose to fight, the children
chose to pose in front of the text which became a symbol concerning their future. To have lived
through the same losses as the children, as a Kurdish artist who was forced to migrate, the work
‘Who were they?’ is the untaken childhood photograph of my generation; the current and future
photograph of an endless war, pain and anger.
