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