EVEN A CAT HAS A MUSTACHE – CANAN ŞENOL

Canan Şenol known as criticizing the ameliorating and normalizing role of channels and the domination and possession of the power sources on individuals with a feminist position, focusing on the basis of patriarchal, religious and political factors shaping the daily life, continues to meet the audience with her new solo exhibition ‘Even a Cat Has a Mustache’ opened in 21st of January at Gallery X-ist. In this exhibition an animation video called ‘Vakvak Tree’, consists of images establishing a relationship between present time and near future of Turkey which is also a referral to the past, a seven work insisted series called ‘ ‘Perfect Beauty’ and also miniatures used in the video-legend “Exemplary” that was shown in the previous Biennial of Istanbul.

The artist problematizes the repression of marriage and family, commodification of woman body in political and religious means and orientalization, as her previous works and the works in this exhibition, criticizing the sexist compulsion hided behind modernity and beliefs and working about the relationship among gender, societal power and control over women body.

The artist, by meeting us as a ‘ravi’ (story teller) called in traditional Eastern tales, where she uses the tale term meaning of a memory transfer and a verbal history of memory, congregates the reality in tales and the epic in reality, and creates a milieu enabling comparison and correlation of present and past, with an expression almost dialectic while dealing with circularity of object and time.

In her work called “Exemplary”, which is an archeological dig of a culture left to conservative groups, miniature was used to realize the atmosphere getting the expression sincere and to structure the association of traditional and modern while comparing of them, and the history imprinted on societal memory was expressed objectively.

The miniatures in this exhibition, highlight the infinity of her multi-conceptual-layers, referring the adaptation of traditional art form, which are selected among the originals resembling with classical Ottoman miniatures and calligraphy used in the video before, comes up the context of women sticking between traditions and modernity in society, drown in tension of secular values, conservatism and institutional religions sensitivities.

Probably being shown for the last time in Turkey, creates a suggestion about not to miss, ‘Exemplary’ work, for which people took place in a queue to see when it was shown in previous biennial will be exhibited in Pompidou in “Turquie et Alors…” at 29th of March (with her work ‘Hicap’ exhibited in 2007 Garanti Platform before) with the Works of Köken Ergun, Erkan Özgen, Şener Özmen and Berat Işık.
Artist’s new legend ‘Vakvak Tree’, similar with Exemplary, consists of miniatures and images belong to recent Turkey history, taking its name from the legendary tree hat grows in hell and has human heads as fruits, according to Islamic mythology and also given its name to an important historical event in 1656, a public execution for quelling an internal uprising of Janissary soldiers, correlates the Ottoman History and the recent Turkish historical events as military strikes with a documentary styled expression.

‘Hünsa’ (the Woman with Testicles), the work created with the inspire by the story of Sultan Halife becoming the sheikh and the starting point of the exhibition’s name, examines the use of normalization and legitimization in patriarchal structure through a sample story shaped with the identification of the consideration of a woman as strong and successful depends her masculinity.

A seven Works involved series called ‘Perfect Beauty’, exhibited in Scope Basel 2009 before, interrogates the mutuality of body politics and the other political aspects, signalizes the masculine point of view behind the opposition of present and past beauty definitions.

This important and rare solo exhibition firstly arranged in X-ist, displaying the different formed Works of the artist, known by her Works shown at biennials, art fairs and group exhibitions and curator of the exhibition ‘Unfair Stimulation’ arranged in Hafriyat Karakoy, can be seen until 13th of February.

Alper Karabatak
27 January 2010
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