[ISEA2011] Panel: Chan­tal Za­kari – The State of Ata, an artists’ book: My Turk­ish I.D. Card

Panel Statement

Panel: Short:Circuit:  Cross Border Communications in New Media Between US and Turkey

The State of Ata is a vi­sual book about the so­cial themes that de­fine con­tem­po­rary Turkey and that specif­i­cally ex­am­ines the im­agery of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, its rev­o­lu­tion­ary leader after World War I. This is a crit­i­cal vi­sual ex­plo­ration on the mean­ing of Atatürk’s im­agery and how it is used in Turk­ish so­ci­ety today. He is seen as the link to West­ern cul­ture. His image is being used as a sym­bol in op­po­si­tion to the Is­lamist po­lit­i­cal move­ment. For the new Turk­ish Re­pub­lic the sym­bolic image of Atatürk is the icon that con­nects the cit­i­zen to the image of a mod­ern Turkey. His image per­vades Turk­ish life. A va­ri­ety of iconic im­ages com­mu­ni­cate the mil­i­tary hero, fa­ther of the coun­try, vi­sion­ary thinker, plan­ner, teacher, re­li­gious leader, even fash­ion model, as he moved to rein­vent every facet of Turk­ish life in­clud­ing mode of dress. With the pre­sent-day strug­gle be­tween sec­u­lar­ists, fas­cists, na­tion­al­ists, Is­lamists, and the mil­i­tary, there is an in­creas­ing in­ter­est in using the image of Atatürk as an em­blem for every po­lit­i­cal po­si­tion. This work also rec­og­nizes the po­lit­i­cal bat­tles within Turk­ish cul­ture that re­volve around fem­i­nine po­lit­i­cal fash­ion, the wear­ing of the scarf and even more ex­tremely, the wear­ing of the black çarsaf. Re­li­gious dress has be­come a po­lit­i­cal state­ment that coun­ter­points the sex­u­ally evoca­tive styles from Eu­rope and the West. This is an artists’ book in its con­cep­tion and de­sign that weaves to­gether pho­tographs, in­ter­views, artists’ in­ter­ven­tions and archival im­agery. It is a crit­i­cal vi­sual ex­plo­ration on the mean­ing of Ataturk’s im­agery and how it is used in Turk­ish so­ci­ety today. Dur­ing a twelve year pe­riod be­tween 1997 and 2009, Mike Man­del and Chan­tal Za­kari, two artists, one Turk­ish, one Amer­i­can, have be­come en­gaged in this pro­ject to bet­ter un­der­stand this con­flict. In this pre­sen­ta­tion Chan­tal Za­kari (one of the two artists) will speak about iden­tity is­sues in re­la­tion­ship to her Turk­ish-Lev­an­tine her­itage. TheStateOfAta.info

  • Chan­tal Za­kari is a Turk­ish-Lev­an­tine artist and a re­cent U.S. cit­i­zen. She re­ceived her MFA from the School of the Art In­sti­tute of Chicago where she was trained as a de­signer and an artist. She pub­lished The Turk & The Jew, in 1998 with Mike Man­del, a book based on the web-nar­ra­tive by the same title, which was launched in 1996. In 2005, using a pseu­do­nym, she self-pub­lished we­bAf­fairs, a doc­u­men­tary of a web com­mu­nity. From 1997 to 2010, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Man­del she co-wrote, pho­tographed and de­signed The State of Ata: The Con­tested Im­agery of Power in Turkey, a vi­sual book about the so­cial themes that de­fine con­tem­po­rary Turkey and that specif­i­cally ex­am­ines the im­agery of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, its rev­o­lu­tion­ary leader after WWI. His­to­rian and au­thor Eti­enne Co­peaux, de­fined the book as “an en­cy­clo­pe­dic re­search of the semi­ol­ogy of power re­la­tion­ships in Turkey”. She has had solo shows of her work in the U.S. and in Turkey and her books are in the col­lec­tion of Brook­lyn Mu­seum of Art, Yale Uni­ver­sity, In­sti­tute of net­work Cul­tures, Getty Re­search In­sti­tute, The Kin­sey In­sti­tute Li­brary and many pri­vate col­lec­tions. She has given book read­ings in the form of per­for­mances in the U.K., Nether­lands, Canada, Turkey and the U.S. Za­kari is a pro­fes­sor in the Text and Image Arts Area at The School of the Mu­seum of Fine Arts, Boston, US. Book: The State of Ata