(Türkçe metni aşağadadır.)

Hi. I’m Deborah. I’m originally from New York, but I’ve lived in Turkey for over 20 years, and I’ve been making art for a long time. I use my artwork to try and get people to examine their relationships with the planet and with each other. I like to create installations that are put together out of many small individual pieces. My work often includes a ‘subtext’ about the role art plays in how we ‘see’ the world.

This fall, I’ll be participating in the 2nd Bodrum Biennial. The exhibition will be held from 12 September-12 November at the Museum of Underwater Archaeology (‘The Castle’) and other venues in Bodrum, Turkey. It is expected to attract upwards of 50,000 visitors. The installation I’m planning on exhibiting (and which will cost about 1,000 USD to construct) looks at the biennial’s theme, ‘Tolerance’, in relation to women in contemporary Turkish society. My aim is to raise awareness about violence against women while at the same time trying to encourage a sense of empathy for people who are ‘different’ than us.

Why am I doing this? I guess I just think that if we can be a little more understanding of each other, we might be a little nicer, a little more patient, and a little less likely to try and do each other harm.

Because I’m taking on a serious subject, I’ve designed (one might even say ‘disguised’) my installation to look like a ‘tourist attraction’ to get people involved with the piece rather than scare them away. (If you'd rather read about the details of the artwork itself before getting into any ‘heavy stuff’, just scroll down to the section on ‘THE PROJECT’.)

THE BACKGROUND

I first developed the idea for the installation ‘Have Your Photograph Taken as an Ottoman Princess’ in response to an article I read a few years ago somewhere on the Internet that said a man in Izmir, Turkey, who had been convicted of murdering his wife, had had his sentence reduced by the court on the grounds that the murdered woman ‘had provoked her husband by wearing jeans’.

I found that unbelievably shocking - and I'm sure you do, too - but I later learned that this was not a one-off 'mistake': It is not uncommon that a Turkish court has ruled a woman's 'revealing' dress to be 'provocation' for murder. (Other things the courts have considered provocation have included 'not cooking dinner' and 'asking for a divorce'.)

With such a dismissive attitude on the part of the State, it is not surprising to find that a recent UN report estimated that 41.9% of women in Turkey experience physical or sexual violene by a domestic partner at some point in their lives. (A recent article from Human Rights Watch helps to explain the extent of the problems facing women in Turkey.)

Of course, violence against women is not limited to Turkey; a low-ball estimate for the prevalence of violence against women worldwide (including physical/sexual violence by a domestic partner and sexual violence by a stranger, according to the World Health Organization,) is 30 percent; in other words, 1 in 3 women will be a victim of physical/sexual abuse in her lifetime.

The key to tolerance is empathy. Empathizing with ‘people like us’ is easy – but developing empathy and showing tolerance for people who appear to be different may take work. By allowing people to try on different identities as easily as they would try on clothes, my installation ‘Ottoman Princess’ aims to help us see that as human beings, we all share much more in common than we might think.

Women have had a particularly tough time in Turkey over the past decade. The government is alternatively perceived as a champion of democracy and religious freedom and as an authoritarian, borderline dictatorship bent on eroding the secularism, i.e. the ‘separation of church and state’, that has been central to the nation’s identity since its founding in 1923.

A single article of women’s clothing – the headscarf – has become a symbol of the divisive issue of the role of religion in Turkish society. At one extreme, there are those who view a ‘covered’ woman as a sign that Turkey is heading towards a Taleban-style theocracy in which women will lose all the freedoms they presently enjoy. At the other extreme, there are those who view ‘uncovered’ women as a sign that Turkish society and traditional values are being destroyed by Western decadence.

In fact, as far as I can tell, most of the country lies somewhere in between. Unfortunately, despite our incredible diversity of lifestyles and beliefs, a reluctance to acknowledge and accept this diversity has polarized women, doing little to move forward efforts to protect women and ensure our rights.

THE PROJECT

Have Your Picture Taken as an Ottoman Princess will be exhibited at the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology (‘The Bodrum Castle’) as part of the 2015 Bodrum Biennial from 12 September-12 November 2015. The installation will consist of nine life-sized figures of women, along with an old-fashioned photographer’s tripod and a sign reading “Have Your Picture Taken as an Ottoman Princess”.

Once the drawings are finished, I’ll turn them over to a sign company (this is the expensive part), and they’ll make me life-sized figures out of ‘forex’ signboard, cutting out a hole in place of the face and adding a metal base to stabilize them. That way, when the figures are displayed outside the Bodrum Castle as part of the biennial exhibition, visitors will be able to place their own faces through the hole in each figure and take photographs of themselves as an Ottoman Princess or any of eight different ‘types’ of women in Turkey today. Moreover, anyone who ‘poses’ for a ‘selfie’ (the ‘photographer’s tripod’ is just a decoy – people will have to take their own photos) will be able to post their pictures to Instagram and to a Facebook page (Ottoman Princess) .

Now for ‘the catch’: Anyone who decides to pose for a photograph will be confronted with a text printed on the back side of each figure. The texts will provide some basic details about a particular legal decision in which a woman’s dress was ‘ruled’ provocation for a violent attack, as well as contact information about organizations working to end violence against women and protect women’s rights. 

PROJECT BUDGET: 1,000 USD
900 USD - 9 figures a@ 100 USD/figure
50 USD - additional signage
50 USD - Indiegogo % (admin fee) 

The costs of this exhibit are pretty straightforward. My personal expenses related to preparing and installing the exhibit are all mine, and I'm asking contributors to pay the very nominal costs of shipping for their own 'perks'. All that leaves is how much I'm going to have to pay the company that will be producing the actual figures and other materials that will be in the exhibit, as well as the administrative costs (i.e. the percent that goes to Indiegogo for hosting this campaign). Leaving room for differences between the estimates I've been given and how much I'll be charged for the actual production, as well as for fluctuations in the exchang rate between the dollar and the Turkish Lira (and the bank charge for currency exchange), I've estimated a nice round figure of 1,000 USD. 

THE OUTCOME