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İPEK DUBEN

Selected Works

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NANUS/HONOR 2013

artbook

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NAMUS/HONOR is a hand-made book of honor killings and domestic violence in Turkey and other countries in the world. It begins in 1998 and continues to the present. Is it ever going to end?.

ŞERİFE  1981

oil on canvas

WHO'S WHO/KİM KİMDİR  2010

accordion book, 68 editions

silkcsreen and digital print

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İNSTALLATİONS
ARTİSİTS BOOK

WHAT IS A TURK?   2003-04

postcard and video installations

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What is a Turk? is about preconceptions of peoples about each other, in this case the Western gaze of Turkey and the Turks during the 20th century.

30 postcards juxtapose descriptions of the 'Turk' by western authors like R.Kipling, Edmondo de Amicis (1896). Robert Kaplan (1994).  The opposition between the image and text creates an ironic look at prejudice and stereotypification.
The idea of the 'terrible Turk' emerged early in the fifteenth century.

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WHAT IS A TURK?   2004

video

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Europeans, Americans, Australians etc. living in Istanbul for various lengths of time were asked to pick from “What is a Turk?” postcards to send to their friends and family back home. They responded to the image and text based on their personal experiences in Istanbul. I hoped to capture the evolution of the Western conception of the ‘Turk’ through their sincere responses which would not necessarily be “politically correct”.

LOVEBOOK  1998-2000

installation view

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LoveBook is a steel sculptural book of victims of domestic violence. It began with 120 cases from Turkey and the United States and is growing as the book travels to different countries. The installation is like an archive housing endless records of wronged and lost lives. It also feels like a place of confession and interrogation which helps to understand and question the limits of stigmatizing criminal and victimized personalities. 

LOVEGAME  1998-2000

detail

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The same material informs LoveGame, a handcrafted roulette table. The wheel is made of domestic items like a food tray and a Chinese wak .The installation room suggests an abandoned casino decorated with glittering mirror globes and mini roulettes on the walls. Viewers playing Russian roulette will determine the fate of the victim with their choice. Love songs in Turkish and English are heard from a radio in the background.

MANUSCRIPT 1994      1993-1994

installation view

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Manuscript 1994 is a visual non-narrative text, a sacred book, also an autobiographic notation. It contains 51 plates which form units of threes and ones. The units stand for words. The words are rhythmically placed to make up 4 sentences.

Manuscript 1994 is a meditation on my identity,  looking at the past and the present focusing on tradition and modernity as they meet and break in the vessel of my body.The work refers to the aestheticism of medieval and Islamic manuscripts which is violated by the sharpness of photographic representation. It looks at the narrow gap between sameness and difference, identity and nothingness, life and death.

MANUSCRIPT   2011

Silkscreen print, 70x50cm

IMOGA 35 editions

ARTEMIS II   1995

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Artemis  was part of project “Ephesus: The imagination of History”.  The double-headed self portrait is a metaphor for Artemis, the ancient Goddess of Ephesus. It consists of two site-specific installations.

Artemis I is a handmade banner in front of the Great Theater on the marble road leading to the lower and main entrance of Ephesus.  The double-headed portrait appears on one side and 90 names attributed to Artemis signed by 90 anonymous women on the other side.

Artemis II  is at the site of the old Prytaneum (parliament building) situated near the top gate of Ephesus where sacrifices were made at her altar. The image is placed in the center of an axis with an ancient arch on one end and two Dorig columns on the other. Each column is wrapped with a poem dedicated to Artemis. The axis creates an altar where Artemis lies in silence as Goddess and offering.

MEMORY CHIP/HAFIZA KARTI  2012

detail

THINKING GARBAGE   2005

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Globalization is making us confront new problems. According to Zygmunt Bauman “Modern survival – the survival of the modern form of life – depends on the dexterity and proficiency of garbage removal.” (Wasted Lives, p. 27) Today, biological, chemical, nuclear and consumer products do not alone constitute garbage. People made useless and functionless by modern global system are added to the pile. The lives of poor and un-modern people seem to have become unimportant and irrelevant.

In the context of “wasted lives” this film portrays some “real and relevant moments” in the lives of people in the Galata neighborhood of İstanbul.

THINKING GARBAGE   2005

video 7"

2012   1992-2012

detail 

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The image  of the female body which is me in Manuscript 1994, is reduced to a pile of flesh representing an androgenic identity or humanity at large in this work. It indicates the passage of time while they move or stagger in the flow.
 

PAİNTİNG

CHILDREN OF PARADISE  2000-2011

detail

FAREWELL MY HOMELAND 2006

video

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Munson-Williams-Proctor Art Museum, Utica NY

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FAREWELL MY HOMELAND   2005   

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Farewell My Homeland shows people forced to leave their homeland at the moment of their crossing borders. Millions fled during the twentieth century beginning with the Balkan Wars of 1912 and continuing with events in India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Mexico, Gaza, Kosovo, Germany, China, Rwanda, Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Albania, Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan and more.

The documentary images are important as part of the imaginary which addresses individual subjectivities

KOSOVO  2010

Silkscreen  70x50cm edition 35

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