Aydan Murtezaoğlu
IN CHARGE

2009

EB73

Portfolio with 8 offset prints after photographs by the artist
48,9 x 68,6 cm (x 7) and 68,6 x 48,9 cm (x 1)

Edition of 35 + 5 AP, all sheets signed and numbered

Portfolio: 1.200 Euro
Single prints: 200 Euro

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more editions by Aydan Murtezaoğlu
Offset print by Aydan Murtezaoglu. Photomontage. 4 children carry a wet and dripping adult person face down by his hands and legs, apparently out of a lake.
Offset print by Aydan Murtezaoglu. A photograph of an interior with an open patio door. Two women are sitting on a yellow sofa under an embroidered white quilt. One of them is holding a baby in her arms and has been mounted into the picture from an older photograph. The other is the artist and is holding a lamb on her lap.
Offset print by Aydan Murtezaoglu. A photograph from the 1970s shows an old red Opel from behind, with two women and a girl standing next to it.
Offset print by Aydan Murtezaoglu. A family consisting of 5 women of different ages and two children are sitting in front of a terrace in light summer clothing. The date of the photograph is written in red at the bottom right: 20.07.1969
Offset print by Aydan Murtezaoglu. A woman at the wheel of a white car drives through the middle of a demonstration
Offset print by Aydan Murtezaoglu. A woman is standing at a table with a chopped rug, her hands resting on the table, looking down and holding a red rose in her mouth. Parts of a crystal chandelier are still above her head
Offset print by Aydan Murtezaoglu. Many images of the artist with her arms raised are cropped and mounted on a white background in such a way that the multiplied bodies form the shape of a uterus.
Offset print by Aydan Murtezaoglu. A somewhat blurred shot from a window shows dense trees on a sidewalk, a white horse with dishes by a street lamp and a carriage.

    In addition to staging everyday life in Turkey, Murtezaoğlu’s photographs deal with practices of disobedience, resistance, or gestures of disruption. It is not uncommon for the artist to place herself in the picture in her stagings in private or public spaces (albeit mostly partially or seen from behind). However, she is not concerned with tracing her own biography; rather, from a kind of representative position, she critically questions the different role models she assumes as a woman, intellectual, and artist in society and which anchor her in the social fabric.
    Eight motifs were selected for the portfolio IN CHARGE – in keeping with the idea of “being in charge,” the artist explores the responsibility she has in the role she has been assigned or chosen for herself in society. On the print titled Angel Leap, her multiplied bodies form a uterus on a white background in a dance-like formation or parade. The motif goes back to the 1993–95 series of serigraphs. Here, the artist arranged the bodies of young girls performing the choreography for the May 19 ceremonies (Atatürk Memorial Day) at the Inönü Stadium of the Beşiktaş Istanbul soccer club under the gaze of men. The feminist symbol was her subversive protest against a male-dominated society. In Female Driver, the artist is seen – obviously digitally edited – as an uninvolved bystander driving her car into the crowd at a political demonstration. In Closed Circuit, leaning with her gaze lowered on a table with a lace doily, her conservative yet provocative attire seems to reflect the often contradictory expectations placed on modern Turkish women. Three motifs resemble family photos from the 1960s or 70s. One photograph (Hippi Day), showing five women and two children sitting in front of a garden fence, appears to be authentic (the date 20.07.1969 is displayed digitally in the lower right corner), whereas Metaphor (Child Employee) and Post Natal (Confined) seem surrealistically alienated by the montage of different time levels and realities. Only in two of the eight prints does the artist herself not appear: the video still Charged, for example, shows a nighttime street scene with a horse harnessed to a carriage from a bird’s-eye view.
    Murtezaoğlu achieves alienating effects through simple Photoshop montages that do not conceal their constructed nature.
    Text: Eva Scharrer