Türkçe | Français | English | Castellano

A night in Lon­don with Zehra Doğan… We are sit­ting at a small table with our glass­es of tea. Fac­ing me, Zehra is draw­ing Ley­la Güven who is on hunger strike. For my part, I am rework­ing pho­tos of hun­dreds of Zehra’s works she has brought with her. Deep in our tasks, we exchange nonetheless…

Tell me, why did­n’t you inter­view me? I want­ed to give my first inter­view to Kedis­tan. I’m angry at you”, Zehra tells me. I admit: “We knew you would be very much in demand upon your release. I even wrote to you about it… And that is what hap­pened. See­ing you stag­ger­ing under the onslaught, we did­n’t want to both­er you with Kedis­tan on top of every­thing else. Oth­er­wise, we would have loved to do an inter­view with you, as you can well imagine.” 

Laugh­ing, we both say:“Why don’t we do it now.” And at 4 AM our con­ver­sa­tion veers into a record­ed interview…

The inter­view that emerges from this 45-minute con­ver­sa­tion is long but is worth the time spent on it. If you wish to reach a deep­er under­stand­ing of Zehra’s works, this is the oppor­tu­ni­ty to do so. Some of you may have seen some orig­i­nals or their repro­duc­tions exhib­it­ed in sev­er­al places through­out Europe dur­ing the past two years. Many oth­ers have also encoun­tered them in the book “Les yeux grands ouverts” or on the web. The works she pro­duced dur­ing her final peri­od in prison are even more strik­ing both by the scarci­ty of the means at her dis­pos­al and the sear­ing inten­si­ty of the strokes…

Zehra, you had a project you had been think­ing about for a long time. You had told us about it in your let­ters also: to open a work­shop for graph­ic arts in Mardin, so that the chil­dren could come into con­tact with art; and not only the chil­dren, either… What encour­age­ment did you find for this project after your release? 

Yes. In fact, the project was wider than that of an artis­tic work­shop for the chil­dren. I could describe it as fol­lows: in the house where we lived in Sur, in Diyarbakır’s his­tor­i­cal neigh­bor­hood, there was a spe­cial atmos­phere. With friends in Sur, a num­ber of painters, sculp­tors and oth­er artists, we had man­aged to cre­ate a spe­cial atmos­phere, all togeth­er. It was a house in which there were con­stant dis­cus­sions, cre­ation and a true artis­tic dynam­ic. Artists from oth­er coun­tries occa­sion­al­ly stayed with us, feed­ing this dynam­ic fur­ther. Peo­ple with no artis­tic expe­ri­ence par­tic­i­pat­ed in this atmos­phere and began artis­tic prac­tices. They attempt­ed to draw, to paint, to write poems, to cre­ate. This house had become an artis­tic space like a workshop.

Neigh­bors could knock on our door and ask “I have a rel­a­tive, can you draw his por­trait?“Our work had attract­ed the curios­i­ty and respect of the neigh­bor­hood. Neigh­bors greet­ed us, asked us if we need­ed anything…In any event, it was a beau­ti­ful cli­mate. And I kept ask­ing myself “Why not cre­ate the same thing in Mardin?” So the project was some­thing in con­ti­nu­ity with this expe­ri­ence. It has­n’t begun yet and, indeed, it is not lim­it­ed to chil­dren. A space allow­ing a sim­i­lar cre­ative atmos­phere, where all kinds of artis­tic sup­plies are avail­able to any­one who wish­es to use them, who wants to cre­ate, to join into the discussions…

When I left prison, I met with warm and intense inter­est from the chil­dren. Hun­dreds of chil­dren want­ed to talk with me, take my pic­ture. They made draw­ings, they showed me their cre­ations “you see, I draw too!” they said with enthu­si­asm. They offered me their draw­ings… As for their par­ents they would ask “Where can we buy artis­tic sup­plies? What must we do so that our chil­dren can learn and prac­tice art? They would ask “When will you open your work­shop? We want to send our chil­dren there too”, “Can you sign up my child?” Some par­ents thought reg­is­tra­tion was required. At least, I think that is how they under­stood it…Yet, for me, I imag­ined it as a place where the doors would be open to every­one. But it was tru­ly won­der­ful to see this enthu­si­asm. Usu­al­ly chil­dren say they want to become a doc­tor, a lawyer, an engi­neer when they grow up…So do their fam­i­lies. And yet, here were a great num­ber of chil­dren say­ing “When I grow up, I will be an artist!“and their fam­i­lies were in agree­ment. It gave me immense pleasure.

On count­less occa­sions, you said that art should belong to the peo­ple. In your notion of a work­shop, you also see it as an open space for cre­ativy and the chil­dren and their fam­i­lies agree with you. Pure hap­pi­ness, then.

And your fam­i­ly? What did your fam­i­ly think when your works made their way out of prison and reached them? Did you talk about it after your release? Do you wish to share this with us?

At first, my fam­i­ly did­n’t pay much atten­tion to my cre­ations, not as much as they do now. In oth­er words, my draw­ings were much appre­ci­at­ed, even when I was still a child, but my art was not con­sid­ered a true pro­fes­sion, my fam­i­ly did not want me to become a painter. Not that my par­ents were aginst it or stopped me from pur­su­ing this, but like many par­ents, they dreamt of their chil­dren as doc­tors, lawyers…

Of course the draw­ings I sent from jail were not the first ones they had seen. For instance, a few years ago, I had hung one of my paint­ings on a wall in their house. And one day, what did I see? My moth­er had used it as a pin cush­ion. I was angry and asked her “Why did you change my paint­ing into a pin-cush­ion?” She answered “What? It would be bet­ter for my pins to get lost?” Years lat­er, the fact I was jailed for one of my draw­ings, the inter­est shown for my work, the fact that friends went to the house ask­ing to see my work prob­a­bly gave a dif­fer­ent under­stand­ing to my fam­i­ly. Same thing for the fact Banksy showed my draw­ing of Nusay­bin above his fres­co in New York… I think my fam­i­ly then thought “Our daugh­ter is doing some­thing fine.” I’m told my father once stood before my paint­ing at home, looked at it for a long time and said: “In fact, it seems this is a mas­ter­piece and we did­n’t under­stand that for years.” (She laughs). To be hon­est, it was no such thing. It did not deserve any more inter­est than that shown to it by my fam­i­ly dur­ing all those years. If truth be told, it’s when they became aware of the inter­est in my lat­er draw­ings that they saw it as a “mas­ter­piece”. It was a bit funny.

One day, when I was in jail in Tar­sus, my father asked me: “Don’t take this amiss, but I’m very curi­ous to under­stand what your draw­ings are say­ing? What do you want them to tell us? There are naked women, with big breasts, big eyes…” When I start­ed explain­ing, he inter­rupt­ed me: “That’s what I under­stood. I thought their eyes were big, so they saw things, they bore wit­ness with mes­sages.“I real­ized he had under­stood very well.

My fam­i­ly spread out on the ground every work they received from prison and spent hours inter­pret­ing it. They would dis­cuss them amongst them­selves. “She did such and such, she meant to say this or that. She used this col­or for such and such a rea­son.“My moth­er wrote songs for me, laments. My nieces and nephews – I have 14 — all say: “When I grow up, I will be an artist.” Those are love­ly things for me.

In fact, Mardin is a town that rais­es its chil­dren with art. The town itself is art. Mardin offers a life where peo­ple love to be hap­py, where they enrich their dai­ly con­ver­sa­tions with tales, quo­ta­tions. Per­haps my stub­bor­ness brought a bit more light on some­thing that was already there…

They under­stood then that you want­ed to express some­thing as correct.

I don’t real­ly share in an approach that would speak of under­stand­ing cor­rect­ly or not.

That is a bet­ter way of say­ing; they under­stood what you want­ed to express.

Yes. Cor­rect or wrong do not exist. We can’t say “Now they under­stand art”, but we should say “They under­stood art, but it has tak­en on oth­er dimensions”.

Zehra Doğan Tarsus
Improvised exhibition prior to her liberation, in Tarsus prison.
Zehra Doğan with little Ayşe the daughter of Şemal, and a friend Hülya. 

In your let­ters you told us about your artis­tic activ­i­ties in jail. You wrote that in the begin­ning of your impris­on­ment, you gave draw­ing lessons to co-detainees. And with great mod­esty you said “at ma lev­el, I attempt to social­ize art”. You let us know there were many oth­er tal­ent­ed women. And in the fol­low­ing peri­od you began cre­at­ing with them. On the back of sev­er­al of the prison works, are even list­ed the names of all the par­tic­i­pants. They are col­lec­tive creations…This col­lec­tive approach great­ly touched and impressed in the coun­tries where your works were exhib­it­ed, peo­ple found your cre­ations and your words very moving.

For me, life itself is art. Peo­ple, main­ly those in oppo­si­tion, stand before some­thing they con­test and pro­duce some­thing with their ideas and their words. Their pro­duc­tion is also art. Any per­son pro­duc­ing some­thing is an artists in some way, because he or she attempts to bring beau­ty to life. The fact of embell­ish­ing life requires an esthet­ic dis­ci­pline. That is the essence of what you learn in art schools. The school sim­ply attempts to teach a basic discipline.

In jail, sev­er­al of my friends were inter­est­ed in draw­ing, in paint­ing. I was draw­ing in almost impos­si­ble con­di­tions. Under the bed, for exam­ple, with extreme­ly lim­it­ed light and per­spec­tive. Even this inter­est­ed them. I think they found me like­able and stub­born. At first they gath­ered round and watched me work. Then, I attempt­ed to give them lessons. When I say “giv­ing lessons”, I sim­ply tried to teach them what I could. Don’t go think­ing this was a fan­tas­tic appren­tice­ship. As each shared her own expe­ri­ences and knowl­edge, I did the same. It was not a “teach­ing” com­ing from on high. I insist on spec­i­fy­ing this, because I would­n’t want this to be misunderstood.

This was a most inter­est­ing peri­od. My friends shared in each stage of cre­ation, even in find­ing titles for the draw­ings or num­ber­ing them. For exam­ple, every Fri­day after clean­ing out our quar­ters, we washed our clothes on the prom­e­nade. Then there fol­lowed the moment to enjoy our cof­fee. We were allowed cof­fee only once a week. Dur­ing this cof­fee break, I would tear a sheet or a shirt and spread it on the ground. Or some­times, my friends took care of this. Using the cof­fee we would make impres­sions on it by using the cof­fee grounds at the bot­tom of our cups. Some­times, the imprint formed a cir­cle, some­times the cof­fee would spread on the fab­ric and take on dif­fer­ent shapes. Togeth­er, we would then trace the designs that appeared. In any event, my friends nev­er let me draw by myself, “Wait, wait, do like this, do like that!” they said… (We laugh). They inter­pret­ed, “That’s not so hot”, “Look at my stain here, it’s much pret­ti­er.” And that was the case. (She laughs again.)

I pinned my draw­ings to the clothes­line. Every­one sat fac­ing it and the com­ments start­ed up, accom­pa­nied by tea and cig­a­rettes…“That spot is very beau­ti­ful,”Over there, that’s not bad”…We stayed a long time like this, inter­pret­ing, some­times seri­ous, some­times mock­ing. In fact, each of those moments was a full-scale exhibition.

All of a sud­den, I’m sud­den­ly remem­ber­ing how, one day, I had made a draw­ing on a tow­el that told about jail…I had pinned it up on the clothes­line, as usu­al. And I want­ed to add a back­ground light­ly stained with tea. In this way, I want­ed to bring what I had drawn into the fore­ground. I pre­pared the tea, put a sponge in it and when moth­er Zeyno saw I was about to apply the tea to the tow­el, she ran up to me and struck my hand: “Stop, stop! You’ll spoil it all! Don’t do that!” I tried to explain it would be even pret­ti­er but she said “No! No!“and would­n’t let me do it. A bit lat­er, I saw moth­er Zeyno on the prom­e­nade, immersed in her book. I still had a mind to add a back­ground to my draw­ing. I start­ed mov­ing up to the clothes­line, slowly…She saw me and start­ed scold­ing: “I can’t even read qui­et­ly from thinking…that girl will try to come over and do some­thing to the draw­ing!” (She laughs). As if she was push­ing away a child who might dam­age a work. And yet, I was the one who had drawn it…But she had made it hers to such an extent…As I drew while talk­ing with them, con­sult­ing them and learn­ing myself about the draw­ings I was mak­ing, every­one found a part of her­self in it and could strike my hand, say­ing: “You’re going to spoil it, stop, why don’t you!”… In the end, I man­aged to do the back­ground any­way, the fol­low­ing morn­ing, on the sly, before moth­er Zeyno woke up…

So what did moth­er Zeyno say when she saw it?

When she woke up, she saw it and said: “Eh, it’s not so bad after all, it’s fine, it’s fine.” I was the one who had done the draw­ing, but she had for­got­ten that. This for­get­ful­ness is excel­lent. They for­get. They do not put you on a pedestal, say­ing “Wow, she’s an artist”. They for­got. As if they had done it them­selves. This is a good thing.

Elif, for example…Elif is a very young woman. One morn­ing, she awoke and said: “Zehra, I must tell you, I had a dream.” On the pre­vi­ous evening, we had made cof­fee stains and left the draw­ing to dry in order to do touch-ups on the fol­low­ing day. Elif told me her dream: “We are look­ing at the sky. The sky is full of stars, but the stars are the stains we made on the sheet yes­ter­day.“The pre­vi­ous evening’s draw­ing was in her dream. I was extreme­ly touched. Those types of things gave me feel­ings even greater than hap­pi­ness. We fin­ished this draw­ing togeth­er and I wrote the sto­ry on the back…


“Stars” Amed Jail, August 25 2018, collective work of the BK‑4 Quarter. 
Coffee, turmeric, ashes, pencil, stolen paint

The fact my friends made the work their own, found them­selves in it, dreamt about it, was very pow­er­ful and inter­est­ing, and made me very hap­py. They were con­stant­ly com­ing up with new idea. “I have an idea. It has­n’t left me since last night. Can you draw it?“they would say, or “Draw this also”…

I paint­ed for each one of my lib­er­at­ed friends. On the day of my own lib­er­a­tion, in the morn­ing, I was still draw­ing for two friends. When I left, all my friends in Tar­sus had a draw­ing. I reserved my last two or three weeks pri­or to my lib­er­a­tion to draw for them. On the last days, we held an exhi­bi­tion in the prom­e­nade and had pic­tures taken.

If truth be told, my first exhi­bi­tion was not the one done in Diyarbakır and titled “141”, con­tain­ing my draw­ings from the prison of Mardin. My first real exhi­bi­tion took place with­in Mardin prison itself. The first exh­bi­tion in my life…And a real one.

My co-detainee friends made all the prepa­ra­tions. We had even orga­nized a cock­tail. For exam­ple, you remove the crust from the bread and let the bread dry in the sun. Then, you put it into a pil­low case and crush it with a glass. You obtain a sort of flour. You add choco­late melt­ed in the samovar, a bit of milk and oil. Once well mixed, we cooked the whole thing in the samovar. We then rolled it into small balls and cov­ered them with coconut. Along with these good­ies, we laid out cook­ies and fruit juice and, voilà, there was our cock­tail for the inau­gu­ra­tion of the exhibition…We had laid out the draw­ings against the bunk beds. That is how we orga­nized an exhibition…

A real exhibition…

Yes! That exhi­bi­tion in Mardin was real­ly a success.

Isn’t that what col­lec­tivi­sa­tion of art is all about? It does­n’t hap­pen by set­ting your­self apart from the oth­ers. As an artist, you’re not under some kind of glass dome. You prac­tice art, art is your phi­los­o­phy. Plain and sim­ple. It isn’t an iden­ti­ty, a privilege.

Art is in the posi­tion of being a part of life…

Yes. What I most fear now is the risk of los­ing that sim­plic­i­ty. When I came out, I was sub­ject­ed to intense sol­lic­i­ta­tion. Very, very itense. That inten­si­ty fright­ened me a bit. Because I think about it all the time, I ask myself: “Zehra Dogan, what are you doing? What are you doing at this very moment? Is that real­ly you? Is it pos­si­ble you are being influ­enced in a neg­a­tive way?”…I can also get lost in that intense interests…It could hap­pen that I no longer find myself. If that were the case, I would not be hap­py. If some­one looks at one’s self and sees some “ele­vat­ed iden­ti­ty”, that can become a nui­sance after a while. At least, this is how I see it for myself. In every­thing I have done up till now, no mat­ter where I was, in Jin­ha, in jail, the peo­ple who appre­ci­at­ed me did so while accept­ing my good aspects and my mis­takes. This is also how I love peo­ple. When we put on an “ele­vat­ed iden­ti­ty”, there is no more room for mis­takes. And a human being will no longer be human. A human per­son­al­i­ty also con­tains his or her mis­takes. You do fool­ish things, you get annoyed… Some peo­ple get angry at you…You must digest every­thing, even that anger. Because crit­cism aimed at you requires accep­tance, digest­ing. But if you put your­self on a pedestal, that becomes impossible.

Today, some peo­ple I do not know approach me care­ful­ly. I am still in a state of bewil­der­ment, but it is beau­ti­ful. But do I have the humil­i­ty to under­tand and inter­pret all this? Will I always know who I am? For that, there must always be a bal­ance. If not, it won’t be possible…

Today, if I say some­thing stu­pid, Naz can crit­i­cize me. I will lis­ten… If I were angry with Naz, I would tell her, she would accept if, because that crit­i­cism would come from the Zehra she knows. But if I start hav­ing a swollen head tomor­row, I won’t be able to lis­ten to crit­i­cism from Naz, or she won’t want to accept mine. Per­haps these are the things that can make a human being mis­er­able, more than life prob­lems rel­a­tive to pos­ses­sions, to com­fort, to sub­jec­tive things… A per­son, whether sleep­ing in the finest bed or on the side­walk, if his or her heart stays the same, the per­son will be the same. But if you build up cer­tain things in your head, in your heart, and become a mega­lo­ma­ni­ac, whether in a beau­ti­ful bed or on the side­walk, you will become the same self­ish person…That is why you must nev­er lose the bal­ance and con­stant­ly keep an account­ing of yourself.

It’s the same thing in art. You must not turn your back on the sources that nour­ish you. I was born on the lands of Kur­dis­tan. I grew up and lived with the motifs from Kur­dis­tan and found mean­ing in every­thing through those rich­es. Yes, the injus­tices and the mas­sacres through which we live are a great mis­for­tune, but we also have beau­ti­ful oppor­tu­ni­ties. There is a strug­gle going on, in which most peo­ple in Europe could not live, nor their child be forged. And yet, it is a chance to be a child who grew up in the Kur­dish strug­gle. In truth, it is even a luxury…This must be well under­stood and well inter­pret­ed. Turn­ing my back on this would be a big mis­take. It would lead to self-dissolution.

If the Tate Mod­ern Muse­um in Lon­don gives me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to exhib­it, as is the case, if oth­er exhi­bi­tions are orga­nized in Eng­land, in France and in oth­er coun­tries and cities, of course I will accept and I will attend. I will not turn my back on them either, because it is Europe. I will try to be every­where, com­bin­ing real­i­ty with my Kur­dish iden­ti­ty and attempt­ing to have a uni­ver­sal out­look. If I focus only on my own lands and turn my back on the out­side world, how will I make my peo­ple and its real­i­ty known to others?

Some­where, I am attempt­ing to make protest art. Because I have things to say, my peo­ple have things to say. I must use every space of expres­sion that opens before me. But how will the same per­son be able to work both in Paris and in Roja­va? That is what I would like to do…

More­over, all these oppor­tu­ni­ties weren’t offered to me sole­ly because of my per­son­al work. If I had advanced alone to this spot, want­i­ng suc­cess would be under­stand­able. Up to a point, you can under­stand those who moved ahead on their own and got a swollen head, you can even accept it in a way. But I have absolute­ly no right to do that, because I exist through the the means the Kur­dish strug­gle gave me. Peo­ple who pay atten­tion and ask “What does Zehra Dogan want to express“are real­ly say­ing “What does the Kur­dish strug­gle mean?” Because I feed myself on this strug­gle, I walked the path it showed me, telling me:“Look, there is this strug­gle going on, you can move for­ward on that road.” For that rea­son, I can­not change, I have no right to change.

On the oth­er hand, I reached this point where I am receiv­ing all this atten­tion now with the col­lec­tive sup­port of Kedis­tan, of PEN, Amnesty, Banksy and Ai Wei­wei, and also a num­ber of orga­ni­za­tions and per­sons I can­not men­tion. If you are some­one with a bit of a head on your shoul­ders, you can see that all this did not hap­pen by itself. Yes, there was some­thing to start off with, but there was col­lec­tive sup­port and efforts to make it vis­i­ble. I think I must see myself as a par­ti­cle in this whole.

Dear Zehra, you know, you are say­ing in your way what I always want­ed to tell you… I wrote it to you in my let­ters, from time to time, but this is maybe the right moment to repeat it. Every­thing you drew and wrote, be it before your arrest or dur­ing your incar­cer­a­tion, over­com­ing the impos­si­bil­i­ties with much cre­ativ­i­ty, and every­thing which man­aged to reach our hand brought us your expres­sion with­out los­ing sight of its nature. On all five con­ti­nents, your words and your tes­ti­mo­ny were under­stood as you express them, which is to say as col­lec­tive and uni­ver­sal. And this is tru­ly pre­cious. We have observed this per­cep­tion dur­ing your exhi­bi­tions and the read­ing ini­tia­tives where we gave voice to your texts. Believe me, we are not say­ing this as a delu­sion inspired by our affec­tion for you. We tru­ly observed it. We noticed the same thing every time. Besides, you are free now and you will see it with your own eyes.

As the tes­ti­mo­ny from your brush and your pen crossed the bridge through art, it touched a very wide pub­lic, beyond that of con­vinced activists. The pow­er of your works reached out even to peo­ple who set foot in an exhi­bi­tion, with a sim­ple yearn­ing for art, and your mean­ing instant­ly reached out to those who opened their eyes and ears.

Does not the road of art toward rea­son go through the heart?

Start­ing with a sim­ple ques­tion such as “Why is this young woman in jail?” an account­ing was done of the whole His­to­ry, the name of the injus­tices and the mas­sacres were pro­nounced… Each time, peo­ple went through a feel­ing a guilt…“All this is hap­pen­ing right now, before our eyes. How is it that we don’t know about it?”… Once they were aware of the lack of infor­ma­tion, the fol­low­ing ques­tion became “Now that we know, what can we do?” The exchanges often went as far as crit­i­cal dis­cus­sion of notions such as the State, and to ques­tions on pos­si­ble alter­na­tives. Eyes also turned toward Roja­va. This pub­lic was made up of peo­ple who often had nev­er even heard the name Roja­va or who knew noth­ing of the geog­ra­phy of Kur­dis­tan… We saw these peo­ple, who had come by pure chance, con­tin­ue these dis­cus­sions amongst them­selves for sev­er­al min­utes, on leav­ing the exhibition…

And it is exact­ly as you say. Attempt­ing to be in the world, which is to say, as an artist, not plac­ing the per­son under the light, but rather your tes­ti­mo­ny. This is how a pow­er­ful sol­i­dar­i­ty was built up around you. It is a bit like a snow­ball that turned into an avalanche as it sped down the hill…

To sum­ma­rize, you trans­formed the basic mate­ri­als into an artis­tic tes­ti­mo­ni­al and the per­sons who were able to see, to hear, to under­stand and to feel often gath­ered round you to give wings to your mes­sage and make it vis­i­ble. All those peo­ple were noth­ing but transmitters…There is noth­ing sur­pris­ing in the fact they put their heart into it.

Yes, the fact you want to car­ry a col­lec­tive and uni­ver­sal mes­sage and tes­ti­mo­ny in any space opened to you is under­stand­able and hon­or­able. No mat­ter where it may be…

As you know, dur­ing a fes­ti­val orga­nized around your exhi­bi­tion, there were some ten round tables, includ­ing one on art, in Sep­tem­ber-Octo­ber 2018. One of the par­tic­i­pants in this round table, Niştiman Erd­ede, a Kur­dish artist exiled in Switzer­land, stressed an impor­tant top­ic. I will try to trans­mit it in her words as best I remem­ber. “I think two things give life to the artist. Emo­tion and moti­va­tion. Moti­va­tion ani­mates the artist toward advanc­ing and suc­ceed­ing. As for emo­tion, it is linked to the cul­ture, the peo­ple, the His­to­ry of which the artist is an inte­gral part. When the artist fol­lows sole­ly moti­va­tion, he or she advances toward per­son­al suc­cess. And, unfor­tu­nate­ly, he/she will be rec­og­nized in the art mar­ket monop­o­lized by the West. Myself, I feel like a part­cile from the lands on which I grew, a mol­e­cule from the cul­ture, the strug­gles that shaped me. For this rea­son, emo­tion ani­mates me and makes me act. For me, if there is one thing that must be ele­vat­ed through art, it is the tes­ti­mo­ny of the cul­ture and the His­to­ry feed­ing me. This is how you must act if you do not want to act through moti­va­tion and become a mon­key on the art mar­kets, on which I cast a most crit­i­cal eye.” These words led to much reflec­tion in the pub­lic. Exchanges con­tin­ued long after the round table. For this raised the ques­tion of a bal­ance that is not always evient in the “career” of every artists. A pre­cious bal­ance… I have the feel­ing that this accent goes in the same direc­tion as what you are saying.

Anoth­er ques­tion… I’m quot­ing from mem­o­ry… In the first let­ter you wrote from Diyarbakır prison, where artis­tic sup­plies were for­bid­den: “I so want to draw… When I see scraped paint on the walls, I see fig­ures.” A week lat­er, in a new let­ter, you told us: “I’ve begun draw­ing again. In fact, I had every­thing I need­ed right here!” And thus you start­ed cre­at­ing again, using food­stuffs, wrap­pers, fab­ric, news­pa­pers. At that point, we con­sid­ered that the fact of cre­at­ing with what was at hand also gave a form to your art. Your research was also shaped by the mate­r­i­al you had. The reflec­tions, mate­ri­als, tech­niques imposed by the con­di­tions made you advance in a way, artis­ti­cal­ly speak­ing. This is how we observed and interpreted.

Many of the works you pro­duced in prison remind­ed us of the scraped paint­ing on the walls that you had described at first. Those where you start from cof­fee stains, for exam­ple… “Zehra both fol­lows plas­tic research through this stain, and achieves per­for­mances in jail”, we said. Isn’t the process of cre­ation a part of the work? What do you say? Did we react correctly…

Yes… You know, when as a child, you looked at the clouds and tried to see things in them…

Ah! That’s it, exactly!

If we could keep our child­hood heart, life would be tru­ly beau­ti­ful. But we lose it, over time. We move toward total­ly dif­fer­ent things and for­get that heart. And some­times, we find it again, under cer­tain con­di­tions. In jail, for exam­ple… When we were lit­tle, we saw things in the mosaics on a street. Or on a shore where, stick in hand, you draw some­thing in the sand. That is also art. It is so remark­able. In fact, art is some­thing so sim­ple. You can nev­er reach some­thing you place too high. You then start to idol­ize it…But art is not like that. It is a sim­ple action. Peo­ple who ele­vate art say: “You can­not prac­tice it. There are peo­ple autho­rized to do so, we are the ones who deter­mine who they are. Go and spend bil­lions of dol­lars, and own it”. This is what is at stake, in fact. You must­n’t let your­self get caught in this. You, as a per­son, can also pro­duce a work of art and hang it in your home. Even if it is made up of sim­ple strokes, it will express your per­son, your feel­ings at that moment. And it will give you hap­pi­ness. Why should you be afraid to hang it on the wall? In jour­nal­ism, most of us do not get our card as such. Is the pres­ence of the card in your pock­et what make you a jour­nal­ist, or the fact of prac­tic­ing jour­nal­ism? You don’t become a jour­nal­ist sim­ply by putting a card in your pock­et. It’s the same with art. You don’t become an artist because you have a diplo­ma from such or such insti­tu­tions, or the fact they autho­rize you to be an artist. You are an artist, right where you are. If you are a farm labor­er… what you draw on the ground with your fin­gers dur­ing the meal break, this also is art. Human beings must be con­scious of their own worth. There is no need for any con­fir­ma­tion from any­one what­so­ev­er. I would even say that if some­one attempt­ed to “con­firm” by say­ing “you are an artist, and you are not”, this would be arro­gance. Who­ev­er shows such arro­gance is a cretin. You must know this…

Real­ly, the Kur­dish strug­gle taught me every­thing. For exam­ple, the piece of fab­ric moth­er Tay­bet held in her hand as a white flag…Perhaps it was a T‑Shirt or a scarf, or even some­thing else with anoth­er use. But moth­er Tay­bet whose life­less body stayed in the street for sev­en days and nights, a few meters from her door, was hold­ing noth­ing oth­er than a white flag. How did we see it? As a T‑Shirt? As a scarf? No, it was some­thing else entire­ly. It said: “I am a civil­ian.” And when you saw it, there was no need for words. Moth­er Tay­bet did not speak, she did not yell. She said noth­ing, but you under­stood. T‑Shirt or scarf, who cares, none of us today know what it was but we all know the mean­ing it had. Every­thing can become some­thing else. The same rule applies in art. Arugu­la, cof­fee, men­stru­al blood… The per­son look­ing at my draw­ings do not see arugu­la, cof­fee, blood. He or she sees the result…

It is so sim­ple. You take a road and you continue…

You also learn not to dom­i­nate. For exam­ple, when you own dif­fer­ent paints, they offer you a choice, so you choose. You say :“I will use this one on this sec­tion, with these dimen­sions, that one here, to obtain such and such a tex­ture…“Like a god, you decide what you will cre­ate, you pro­ceed and you obtain a result. You look at it like some­thing divine. What I was doing in jail was not like that.

I cut a piece of a sheet or of a T‑shirt and put it on the ground. Each fab­ric has a dif­fer­ent absorp­tion capa­bil­i­ty. You pour some­thing on it, blood, for exam­ple. While the fab­ric is absorb­ing the blood, you do not know when it will stop. Cre­ation is out of your hands, it is at the mer­cy of the mate­ri­als. Then, you savor the spec­ta­cle between the fab­ric and the blood accept­ing one another…You no longer dom­i­nate, you wait. When the shape goes toward a form you like, you become enthu­si­as­tic and you say: “All right, stop now.” But the stain may go on spread­ing. Then you think :“It does­n’t mat­ter, it’s beau­ti­ful any­way, I can make some­thing of it”…What is hap­pen­ing? You are not longer dom­i­nat­ing. And this is reflect­ed in your whole life. Because even with­out being aware of it, you inter­nal­ize this expe­ri­ence, and it is reflect­ed in your friend­ships and loves. You learn to live, lis­ten­ing, under­stand­ing oth­ers and putting things in common.

When the fab­ric and the blood end their mutu­al action, they invite your inter­ven­tion: “Come on, it’s your turn.” At that point, you add what you want. In a way, they autho­rize you to do so. Thus you acquire qual­i­ties of atten­tion, under­stand­ing, empa­thy and a sense of the col­lec­tive. This shar­ing is pos­si­ble in artis­tic cre­ation. This is why I think these stains have very deep meanings.

Some­where, the mate­ri­als also become par­tic­i­pants in a cre­ation you real­ize like a performance…

Yes, that’s exact­ly right…A total­ly dif­fer­ent some­thing is cre­at­ed and the cre­ators are not only them, nor am I the sole cre­ator. It is a whole that nature has autho­rized and to which it has giv­en birth.

Zehra Doğan
December 9 2018, Tarsus Prison
Pomegranate skin, red cabbage, moss and rain…

You know, now that you’ve explained this whole approach, many of your works, espe­cial­ly those you had left out in the rain, have tak­en on a very deep meaning…

Here is how those works were done: I did­n’t say “let’s go put them out in the rain.” Real­ly, each coin­ci­dence teach­es you some­thing new…I had obtained a col­or by boil­ing peel­ings from a pome­gran­ate in the samovar. I poured that col­or on the papers, I added some moss­es I had scraped off the prom­e­nade and to allow this to dry, I placed them under a board in the kitchen. A bit lat­er, I saw that the draw­ings had stained the tiles. In order to clean the floor, I car­ried them out to the prom­e­nade. And sud­dent­ly, it start­ed to rain. But such a rain! My friends said: “Let’s go gath­er up the draw­ings” but it was rain­ing so hard that we were going to be soaked. While we watched and won­dered what to do, we noticed the beau­ty in the meet­ing between the draw­ings and the rain. So I said: “Let’s leave them. We’ll see what comes of it.” My friends were angry. “Your work will be ruined, it will come out lousy!” I answered: “I did­n’t do much by mak­ing stains, once dried, there will be a sur­prise, let’s leave them”… All of us at the win­dow, we fol­lowed the show. The drops of rain danced with the mate­ri­als on the draw­ings, they sang togeth­er. And we plunged into this land­scape. We drank tea, we talked. We expressed many things on what we were observ­ing. Thanks to that down­pour and those draw­ings, our day was mag­nif­i­cent. Because all this cre­at­ed a love­ly atmos­phere. In no gallery, in no muse­um no mat­ter how pres­ti­gious an art loca­tion it may be in the world, will you be able to see such a per­for­mance. You see this per­for­mance between the walls of a prison and you are part of it even. You can make your life more beau­ti­ful that way. You can see the beau­ty of life every­where. Even if you stand in line in front of a fan­tas­tic place where you will find superb cre­ations you can reach after lin­ing up for hours and buy­ing the most expen­sive tick­et in the world, you will not find such a performance.

Where should you stand? Above all, you must know this. This is why, between those four walls, I saw this per­for­mance that I will nev­er find any­where else in the world, that could not occur any­where oth­er than where I was. Now, even by spend­ing for­tunes, no gallery and no muse­um can repeat it. An evanes­cent per­for­mance in a bit of fleet­ing time. A moment with no replay. We had the good for­tune to see this. I am but one of the wit­ness­es. And a mag­nif­i­cent work was the result of that moment. I nev­er made a more beau­ti­ful painting.

Peo­ple would need to lis­ten to one anoth­er, to lis­ten to nature. You see, there are pre-deter­mined accep­tance or refusal cri­te­ria, bias­es, beliefs such as “art is done this way, with this type of brush, that kind of paint”, or expec­ta­tions so that this muse­um, that author­i­tiy autho­rize you, thoughts on how you must be in order to be a con­firmed artist…In fact, art is not a thing we can emprison in framed accep­tance or refusal mea­sures. Real­ly, art is not that.

Nor is life…

Yes, exact­ly.

Thank you, Zehra. Every­thing you are say­ing does not only apply to art, but to all of life, real­ly. You see why it is not for noth­ing that I tell you “you teach me things every day.” I thank you for mak­ing us think, and I kiss you on the forehead.

You are the one I thank. Besides, with­out you sup­port from the beginning…

With all my heart…There’s no need to talk about it. I won’t even write it.

I want you to write it. It is a real­i­ty every­one knows. It is sup­port you offered me first and fore­most as a friend. I am not talk­ing of sup­port that came from on high. We were already friends before I went to jail. And I thank you for the great sup­port you gave me, as a friend, dur­ing my empris­on­ment. You will write that, all right? (She laughs).


Zehra Doğan con­tin­ues to work like a bee. Toward the end of May, she is a guest of the Tate Mod­ern in Lon­don. And a num­ber of pro­ject­ed exhi­bi­tions are on their way…

You can fol­low her news and the exhi­bi­tion agen­da on her site zehradogan.net

This year again, on Novem­ber 15th in Paris, dur­ing the evening of read­ings around the World Day ded­i­cat­ed to impris­oned writ­ers, we will hear texts by Zehra, in her pres­ence. The ini­ta­tive is co-orga­nized by the French PEN Club and Edi­tions des femmes. A ren­dez-vous as a pre­view for Zehra Dogan’s prison cor­re­spon­dence, soon to be pub­lished by Edi­tions des femmes under the title “Nous aurons aus­si des beaux jours” (We will also have beau­ti­ful days), and as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to vis­it the exhi­bi­tion of orig­i­nal works at Espace des Femmes.


Translation by Renée Lucie Bourges
You may use and share Kedistan’s articles and translations, specifying the source and adding a link in order to respect the writer(s) and translator(s) work. Thank you.
Naz Oke on EmailNaz Oke on FacebookNaz Oke on Youtube
Naz Oke
REDACTION | Journaliste 
Chat de gout­tière sans fron­tières. Jour­nal­isme à l’U­ni­ver­sité de Mar­mara. Archi­tec­ture à l’U­ni­ver­sité de Mimar Sinan, Istanbul.