Here is the Eng­lish trans­la­tion of a video along with an arti­cle pub­lished by Euronews  on May 17 2019. Zehra Doğan speaks of her feel­ings about the instal­la­tion she has real­ized at the Tate Mod­ern in London.


Türkçe | Français | English

Along with three oth­er artists, I will be exhibit­ing at the Tate Exchange from May 21st to 25th.  I will be exhibit­ing an instal­la­tion with which I will relate what hap­pened in the region [the Kur­dish towns in South­east­ern Turkey]. More­over, there will be arti­cles I pub­lished after col­lect­ing sto­ries direct­ly from the inhabitants.

I’m very hap­py about this con­text. As an artist whose draw­ing sup­plies were con­fis­cat­ed in Turk­ish jails, who had more than twen­ty draw­ings con­fis­cat­ed and destroyed, I’m very hap­py. The fact that these works which they tried to cen­sor should now be exhib­it­ed in a place such as the Tate Mod­ern has a lot of mean­ing. At the same time, what an artist would most wish is to pro­duce art on her own lands, and that the art she makes be exhib­it­ed in those lands.

I will give just a small exam­ple… I spoke to my moth­er about my exhi­bi­tion at the Tate Mod­ern. But she asked: “What’s Tate?”. This is not to under­mine the impor­tance of my instal­la­tion, but the fact that an exhi­bi­tion occur­ring in a place she does­n’t know will not make her any hap­pi­er. The fact of exhibit­ing close to her, in Diyarbakır, in Mardin, an exhi­bi­tion she could attend with her neigh­bors would make my moth­er much hap­pi­er. I give an exam­ple of an artist’s fam­i­ly, but this holds true for writ­ers and for all artists and intellectuals.

Real­ly, the great­est pun­ish­ment for an artist, what makes him or her most unhap­py is being forced to work far from his or her lands.

Obvi­ous­ly, the Tate Mod­ern is impor­tant and this is won­der­ful but, please, sup­port all artists sub­ject­ed to oppres­sion in Turkey, sup­port the jour­nal­ists, the authors. I think there is need for more inter­na­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty. That way, we could pro­duce even more beau­ti­ful things on our lands.”

You can also read the Euronews arti­cle in Turk­ish, by click­ing HERE.

ALSO READ this inter­view in which Zehra speaks at length about art.

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KEDISTAN
Le petit mag­a­zine qui ne se laisse pas caress­er dans le sens du poil.