Feyyaz YAMAN, "The Visible Relationship That Covers", 2010

The distinction between that which reveals directly and that which reveals through “implication” is the process of the social systems evolving from the material to the metaphysical.

The social structuring of humankind in the pagan world and the hunter tribe systematizing the matter as a result of the relations of production it has established with the nature, had caused humankind to attribute different meanings to the rocks, trees and the birds in terms of sacredness and caused it to create its own "totem" and thus the social government to be constructed accordingly, causing the chief, sovereign, khan, shaman and clergy social structuring to be carried into effect. This visible state of the matter and how the age made sense of the "sacred" was in a tangible format that could be directly comprehended as a symbol in this process. The definitions of nature-humankind and therefore of the law and the jurisprudence were of the same simplicity. The conflicting elements, contradictions and reconciliation methods were much more humane and preferable compared to the dilemmas we are stuck with concerning the relationships between nature and humankind or among the humankind as a result of our “well developed” sociality which we define as the "evolution of mankind". 

We need to think of urbanization and the “systematizing” of the representative power mechanisms, the transition from the material to the metaphysical and the sacredness that started with Plato and evolved into the “holy scriptures” of monotheistic religions as well as the definition of the relationship between the "law" and the justice and the concerning matter within the same context.

Showing this without showing, not through what's covered but rather through what’s visible, necessitates us to analyze the relationship between that which covers and that which is covered, the mechanisms of body and power, in other words our states concerning “looking” and “seeing”, namely our indirect relationships with the nature and the matter.

Giorgio Agamben labels this as the distinction between the zoé and the bios. This is defined as the contrast between the concept of simple life/livelihood, which is the common characteristic among animals, human beings and gods, and the life style that is a characteristic of an individual or a group, or as the contrast between the concept of simple living in an ancient city and the political life. On one hand are the bodies, which have been imprisoned inside the “house” and to a life focused merely on reproduction, in other words, bodies that have been covered, and on the other side is the "citizen" walking through the bazaar as a “political animal.” A process in which natural life has begun to be incorporated into the mechanisms and calculations of the government capacity and has thus caused politics to transform into bio-politics. (Foucault)

It is possible to explain this situation over the naked life-political existence, zoé-bios, exclusion-inclusion duality and as the conflict between the body and the power.

Within this context, the concepts of “that which covers and that which can not be covered” as well as "that which is dragged” and the queries regarding nature-space, woman-body power relations that are brought up by Nazan Azeri, have in a paradoxical way coincided with a time period that re-intersects both in terms of our art history and in terms of our legal history. Our “natural life” regarding which an effort is displayed to regularize with the need for a new constitution, has been cramped parenthetically between two points, namely the beginning (September 12, 1980) and the end (September 12, 2010) points of our recent history.

Following the second world sharing war, all victims of the world, starting with the Paris of 68, wanted to legalize the law of imposing the free body on the social life without hiding or covering it and advocated “nudity” for this purpose. When this demand for the "simple state" of the subject transformed into a direct threat against the structures of power, this situation had to be interfered with throughout the world. The restructuring of the covering mechanisms through a discipline regarding the hair, the beard, the dress code and behavior was necessary for the continuation of the governing state. For this purpose, nudity was assimilated by the system by means of the marketplace such as fashion, pornography and sex tourism.

This intervention, which had been sanctioned in our country with the constitution of 82, changed rapidly from a social body approach to a questioning from a subject iveand individual perspective. It evolved into the scarecrows of Neşet Günal, collages of Gülsüm Karamustafa, cotton flannels of İpek Duben pasted on canvas, veils of İraf Önürmen, the “blond” wigs of Neriman Polat and the burqas of Şükran Moral expressed over the “identity of that which covers.” On the other hand, regarding the "identity of that which is covered”, it is possible to keep track of a process that begins with the body bulks on Fatma Tülin’s large scale canvases, continues with İrfan Önürmen’s pornographic bodies, reaches a level of realism with Neşe Erdok’s “Mother” series, builds bridges with the traditional through Aslan Eroğlu, transforms into a body that settles accounts with itself through the works of Gül Ilgaz, is burst into nothingness with Özgür Korkmazgil's works and turns into internal violence with Taner Ceylan.

In accordance with this, what Nazan Azeri puts forth is the legality of not having a body beyond all of the aforementioned within this framework. Her recent works act as a radically held accounting book concerning the conflict regarding that which has been lost in terms of belonging, that which resists hereditarily and that which is destroyed in terms of nature. The contrast between black and white and the distinction between the organic and the inorganic imposes a sense of ethics with sharp geometric forms and texture contrasts. In parallel with the reality of this world that constantly becomes more and more chaotic , a tension based on the fear that speaks through the woman-body sensitivity and nature, from its instinctive, non-urban (zoé) roots.

The fears of the romantics in the face of civilization and modernity expressed over that which is lost and a chilling anxiety and desire similar to the chaos of the contradictory structures regarding the change concerning the future, requires a pact to be made with the devil in a fashion similar to Faust. It seems that they are on the threshold of a desire that resembles the will of intervention regarding the future that resembles the Soviet ideal when it first set out. Surface editings that resemble photomontages and have the visual quality of Dziga Vertov, turn into the bodiless screams of an animalistic creature against the time which attempts to cover.

The silence we’re feeling is the sound of Cosmos.