Nergis Abiyeva
The Songs in Me: Nazan Azeri
I had reviewed the literature on the women artists of the early Republic era and studied Nazan Azeri’s master’s thesis titled “First Generation Women Painters in the Westernization Movements” (1996) when I was still an art history student in the early 2010’s. Then, I got to know her personally during the covid pandemic. Our fondness of each other and our friendship turned into diverse cooperations and finally brought us together in this exhibition titled The Songs in Me. In this exhibition, we are contemplating in company on matters such as invisible domestic labor; adopting the responsibilities of being an artist, being a mother and being a spouse at the same time; caregiving for others; striking a balance between receiving and giving; and the concept of reciprocity. These have an important place both in the feminist literature and in both of our works and they have turned into an exhibition that goes back and forth in time with flashbacks.
Nazan Azeri has been producing art consistently as an independent woman artist for longer than 30 years since her graduation project in 1993. Her works make the connections between nature, cultural codes and ancient knowledge visible. The empowering of women and the questioning of social gender roles play a prominent role in her works as well. This is also true for the fundamental ideas behind “the Forgotten Time and the Now” series of artworks she started working on in Ayvalık in the summer of 2021 and has continued working on up to this day in various shapes and forms. In the universe fictionalized by Nazan Azeri in this series; animals such as cats, dogs, rabbits and deer are intertwined with women and babies. They all touch each other and breathe together. The plants and animals arranged around figures of women as well as images of fetuses and children direct the gaze to a universe propounded by a mythical memory that precedes the written text. Nazan Azeri speaks of intuitions rather than concepts or thoughts: “Being a woman in such a geography affects me. I am greatly affected by the climate crisis, and this is true about wars as well… These enter my psyche and create certain sensations in my body; my creation process continues as a response or answer to this and these turn into images.”
The artist questions the systems that are designed based on the opposition of culture (male) and nature (female) and that create inequality. The color iconography in the “Forgotten Time and the Now”, which she created as a rebellion against the nature-culture duality, make references to diverse influences from the Far East to Anatolia, from the tiles of the Topkapi Palace Circumcision Chamber to the pictures produced in Ancient Egypt.[2] Nazan Azeri readdresses the symbolic meanings contained in the colors blue and red in the prominent works of art history with a “frame breaking” approach. Even though “the Forgotten Time and the Now” series reminds us of Yves Klein and the “Vitruvian Man” drawing of Leonardo da Vinci, which put the male human figure at the center of the world, it also gives a quiet but harsh answer to the art cannon set forth/written by male artists.
Among her artworks, which feel as the results of a naïve artist’s brush full of rich and vibrant colors reminiscing of a fantastic world, one created specifically for the “The Songs in Me” exhibition attracts particular attention. In this picture, we see a crown on top of the head of a figure. The figure is intertwined with nature and stars, flowers and animals surround it. The figure’s connection with snakes reminds us of nature’s circularity and renewal. The artist, here, creates a hybrid figure influenced by Artemis, known as the goddess of hunting and wildlife in Greek mythology, usually depicted as intertwined with nature, and Şahmeran of the Mesopotamian culture, the top half of which is a woman and the bottom half a snake. The hairy depiction of the figure gives her an even more wild and nature-affiliated character. The hairy Artemis-Şahmeran figure is a strong female figure embracing the natural world and wildness. The hairs adopt a discourse that makes us contemplate the wild nature of human beings and their intrinsic connection with nature. The hairs also represent a deviation from the norms, making us question the traditional perceptions regarding beauty and womanhood.
Nazan Azeri had a wish to turn the “Forgotten Time and the Now”, which she created with acrylic on handmade paper and cloth, into ceramic form for a long time. She studied to the language of ceramics for 2 years and is displaying her ceramic artworks in the “The Songs in Me” exhibition for the first time.
On the other hand, the “Growing Up” series, created in 2002, twenty years prior to the “Forgotten Time and the Now”, is the last part of a trilogy. Nazan Azeri had planted flowers on toy guns in the first part of the trilogy titled “I Remember” and lentils on plastic dolls in the second part titled “Metamorphosis”. She searched all over in Tahtakale for the kinds of hairless plastic dolls she played with when she was a child and found them. Then, she photographed these dolls in various forms inside her home and garden together with household items as if playing house. Here, the artist moved the plastic dolls, which are themselves objects of play, to a place outside the subject-object duality and fictionalized a game within a game.
The third part of the trilogy is different from the first two works in that she includes her own body in the artistic process. In her home performance titled “Growing Up”, she performs the act of growing lentils, beans etc. in vertical bands of cotton in the balcony of her house. Growing lentils in cotton has a place in the collective memory and is an act transferred from generation to generation. I had also done it with enthusiasm when I was a child. She waters and grows the lentils in cotton for one and a half or two months and wearing these bands of cotton on her body, photographs and video-records the stages. Following a process of 2 months, she selects 3 photos displaying the stages. The composition in these photographs is reminiscent of Mantegna’s Lamentation of Christ painting and moves us beyond the life-death duality.
Even though there are nearly 20 years between the “Forgotten Time and the Now” and the “Growing Up” series, the insistence of the Nazan Azeri in fictionalizing a universe that stimulates a post-human thought is of prominence. In both series, the human body is united with non-human beings and triggered are the sensations intrinsic to play, growing up and childishness.
Dolls and Keeping on Playing as a Dadaist Attitude
The strong connection between Nazan Azeri’s academic studies and art practice is one of the consistent threads of this exhibition. The artist completed her doctorate thesis titled “Playfulness in Visual Arts: Renaissance, Dada and Surrealism” in 2000. Within this context, I see her artworks with dolls, through which she continues to play, as an extension of the Dadaist attitude. Dada’s woman artists Hannah Höch ve Emmy Hennings had also created Dada dolls with their own hands and included them in their performances and art production. As childless women artists, they created a new discourse about being a woman. When Emmy Hennings read her poems and novels at the Cabaret Voltaire nights, Dada dolls accompanied her. During these puppet theater-like performances, she had the doll speak unexpected and shocking things, and as a result, angered the spectators and made them laugh at the same time. Hearing striking comments from the lips of a doll, a child’s toy, created a shocking impact on the distinguished class of Zurich. Hennings and her doll rejected the preconceptions about what a woman should be and can speak. They took on a crazy and sexual identity.
On the other hand, Hannah Höch, in the 1st International Dada Fair, which she participated at as the only woman artist, exhibited two dolls, also known as the ‘Dada-Puppen’, in addition to her collages. The next year, in a Dada ball, she, herself, wore a doll costume. Then, what did Dada dolls symbolize for Höch? The “New woman” figure emerging in post-war Germany had to answer new desires and expectations while also being subjected to the traditional paternal perspectives. Höch, to ironically emphasize this inconsistency, made dolls with short hair, slim waists and distinct breasts. She sarcastically criticized the ideal woman figure indoctrinated to women from young ages on through their dolls.
This Dadaist attitude is also observed in Nazan Azeri’s early period. She created all her photo and video artworks on home life, social gender, mother-child relationship and caregiving in the early 2000’s using dolls.
We included the video works “A Doll” (2000), “A Day” (2001) and the photography works “The Guests”, “”Waiting for Odysseus” and “Metamorphosis” (2002), all of which are dated 1993-2003, in the exhibition in dialogue with each other. In the video work titled “A Doll” (2000), the camera cuts to a pretty and well-dressed doll’s arm moved by the artist. In this “stop-motion” video, the doll begins to put on lipstick in front of the mirror on a make-up table. The reflection of the doll in the mirror moves into the frame and the doll begins to overflow the lipstick from her lips as she continues to put it on. The tension grows as the lipstick overflows all over her face. This is reminiscent of the children who attempt to clumsily put on their mother’s lipstick and makes us think of the performative aspects of gender. In “Waiting for Odysseus”, also, a doll lies in bed next to a man whose back is turned to her. Here, Nazan Azeri, draws our attention to the relationships between the house and playing house as well as between play and the toy, by using a human being and a lifeless doll in the same work of art.
The video work titled “A Day” is another artwork with the same doll playing the main part. The visual begins inside the house with Nazan Azeri and the doll sitting face to face at the breakfast table. The artist begins to talk faintly with the doll dressed as a grown-up. The doll wears a pearl necklace and red cardigan. The artist places breakfast items such a cheese, cucumber and jam on the doll’s plate and tries to feed them to the doll. In one scene, we, as viewers, encounter a fork stretched out to our faces. As the doll’s indifference to the food continues, the tension climbs. The sound of the cutlery and Nazan Azeri’s faint talk intermingles. The camera follows the artist walking out the house, carrying about the doll. In the tea house they sit at, the artist orders two glasses of tea in an extremely casual manner. The waiter is clueless as to what’s going on. After forcing the doll to drink the tea, they return home. This is a day that begins and ends at home and transitions between public space and private space.
“Guests” also shares the same theme and tension with the “A Day” video. In this series, which consists of nine photographs, dolls, the number of which continuously increases, are photographed on black sofas. The tension increases as the guests become more crowded. The pleasant smell of the coffee spilled on the sofas almost reaches our noses. The fluctuating emotional states of the host, who is bossy, puzzled and furious at different times is like a satire on the dynamics of hosting guests. Whose domestic labor is it spent when hosting guests in the Turkish society famous for its hospitality?
Humor
Photography based works titled “MeObjects”, “SubjectMeHero” and “ObjectMeHermaphrodite” were exhibited for the first time together at the group exhibition titled “Strictly for the Family organized by independent artists and held at the Karşı Artworks. They also find their place in this exhibition to be re-introduced to the public. As I write this text, I come to realize that Nazan Azeri had expressed in the exhibition catalogue of “Strictly for the Family” that she evaluates the conditions of being a woman within the contexts of being inside and outside; motherhood; housewifery; subject-object and power relations.
In the series consisting of photographs titled “MeObjects”, we see the face and body of the artist’s neighbor in the reflections on diverse household items. This neighbor is Cemile searching for her own image in the reflections on the objects. These objects present strong metaphors as to how she views herself and how she interacts with the social norms. A “housewife”, looking at herself by means of the objects she owns and uses at home, makes us contemplate on the impact of the domestic space on womanhood and identity. In one sense, the “MeObjects”, reflects the effort of the individual to define its existence and identity through the objects around her. Nazan Azeri makes her interaction with and observations on her own environment a part of her art production using the image of her neighbor. She draws emphasizes the invisible domestic labor using daily objects. All household items on discount for reasons such as Mother’s Day or Women’s Day use advertisements or campaigns that represent women as servants and identify them with house chores and thus draw a certain negative reaction. Still, they seem to have no end.
On the other hand, “SubjectMeHero”, focuses on Superman, one of the most iconic superheroes of the comic world. Superman’s blue costume and red cape creates a color iconography that also corresponds greatly with Nazan Azeri’s “the Forgotten Time and the Now” series. Nazan Azeri selects a photograph of the Superman character, created in 1938 and has turned into the symbol of male heroism since then, and prints it on a t-shirt. Then, she performs a photo-shoot that falls between truth and fiction with the help of her aid Zülfiye. In the four frames chosen by the artist from among numerous photographs taken of an act between a t-shirt and a human being for the “Strictly for the Family” exhibition, the Superman t-shirt is washed, hung, ironed and finally, Superman, smacks the woman who has undertaken all this labor. We also included the photo in which Superman’s feet are washed with a pitcher to the “Nothing Like You Said” exhibition.
The photo titled “ObjectMeHermaphrodite” utilizes the soccer ball. Soccer is an area in which social masculinity and in one sense toxic masculinity is reproduced. Combining the ball, namely the symbol of soccer, where males are predominant in general, with accessories particular to women, such as head scarfs and wigs, the artist makes the viewers question social gender roles and expectations. The artist selects a ball that purposely looks like a face and performs the photo-shoot on green grass, giving the sense of a soccer field. She does this to criticize the power structure established based on the hair of the women without losing “humor”. The “SubjectMeHermaphrodite” criticizes the obstacles and stereotypes that women face in the society, including the world of sports.
Art-Life
When I look at the artworks we included in the exhibition, I realize that the most important characteristic of Nazan Azeri’s art production is spontaneity. For Nazan Azeri, an artwork is not a meta-act or a separate phenomenon but one of the “things” she does in the daily course of life. Her house, which she uses as a workshop/home, is also the studio she created the works in the exhibition at. The artist staged her works titled “Guests”, “Growing Up” and “Metamorphosis” in the living room, balcony and surroundings of her house in Fenerbahçe. She also includes the people she is close to and are a part of her life in her artistic process as well. In the works in which the artist acts, the ones who use the photo and video cameras are the artist’s son Alican and husband Ali. The artist makes the people in her daily life a part of her art and this is particularly interesting. In “Waiting for Odysseus”, the person she photographed with the doll is her own husband. Her aid Zülfiye and neighbor Cemile also can be seen in her artwork.
Her emphasis on the fact that she can convey to art only the things she feels in her body, reminds of Donna Haraway’s “situated knowledges” concept. Donna Haraway argues that vision as a metaphor can be used to overcome dualities in her famous article "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective” published in 1988. One of the most important aspects of Haraway’s vision metaphor is that it is embodied in the body. With the notion of vision emerging from or embodied in the body, Haraway, eliminates the transcendent “white male point of view” that ‘pretends to be God-like’ and claims that it can see everything from anywhere. Vision embodied in the body always comes from a certain place or person. Haraway accesses the resulting situated knowledges by objectivism embodied in the body. She believes feminist objectivism concerns situated knowledge more than the transcendence of and division between the subject and the object. In situated knowledges, knowing, seeing, witnessing, declaring and talking always comes from a certain body situated at a certain time and location.
Bearing witness, intuition, vitalness and spontaneity in Nazan Azeri’s art creation, brings us closer to the subject matter of “eliminating the distinction between art and life”, which has been the focal point of art since the 20th century as well as reminding us one more time how urgent feminist interventions are both in art and in life.