from http://www.feministezine.com/feminist/TurkishWomenArtists.html


Tomur Atagök

In the course of globalisation and given our present standpoint between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, everything is subject to re-evaluation and change. Both contemporary issues and universal value systems have forced a re-examination of our ideas at a time when questions about the center and the peripheries, the local as opposed to the universal, East and West, part and whole are being raised. Within the context of culture and an opening of its borders and disciplines, the creative process , and the conditions as well as the politics that shape it, are bringing to our attention the work of non-western participants both minorities and the once-silent majorities. The reassessment of the issues around artistic activity has been raised by many people who would not previously have had a voice in the making of contemporary art. Following the airing of many issues concerning human rights and the development of policies for equal opportunities for all, regardless of race, country, religion and sex, women artists, curators and museum people are focusing on the near-absence of women artists in the mainstream of arts.


Turkey which has always been a geographical bridge between the East and the West, is becoming a focus once again for these debates, and is forced to look back at its own history in order to reconsider its own status in the emerging debate on multiculturalism and synchronize its own artistic performance with the present Western-centered art context.

We only have to go back to the last century to compare Turkish women's standing with those in the West. We too can talk of significant dates in the education of women and women's rights like 1858 :for example, the founding of the first Secondary School for Girls, 1870: the first Teacher's College for Girls, 1883: the founding of the Academy of Fine Arts, 1914: and the founding of an Academy of Fine Arts for girls in Istanbul


We can even elaborate on the social background of all the early women artists' families and come up with a picture reflecting their society, Islamic in religion but very progressive in its attitudes towards women taking their up a place in that society. We may elaborate further, by stating that the Westernization that started in the last quarter of 1800's was accelerated by the founding of Turkish Republic in 1923, opening up new avenues for women while cutting to some extent their ties with the traditions and traditional arts. We may even underline the fact that artists wanting to depict reality moved into a new terrain, adopting the Western way of seeing away from their Eastern way of constructing the visual world. We can also note that the tendency of early works by many artists was towards portraits of people closest to them and studies of interiors showing their rebellious attitude to both Islamic traditions as well as their joy in their newly found ability to portray the society in which they lived.

However, without forgetting the continuation of Western influences in the first half of 20th century, let us dwell on Turkish women artists since the seventies for the sake of picturing the contemporary art scene.

In a society where women are traditionally taught and furthermore encouraged to engage themselves in weaving, embroidery and knitting, learning to paint is already an acceptable accomplishment. More than half of today's Turkish artists are women. Although the University Art Departments all have women as the majority of their students, the number of women artists who survive the professional struggle is few. Even more women artists gain a private training and it is after this that they too join the field. It is also striking that there are very few women educators in the faculties of the art departments while the ratio in other fields such as architecture and sciences is today more evenly balanced.


There are many possibilities for exhibiting works in metropolitan Istanbul and in the capital city Ankora. Both young and amateur artists have a chance to exhibit at the state or municipal galleries as well as the art galleries of Banks. This relatively positive picture starts to darken when one looks at the past of Turkish art in the 20th Century where few women artists appear among the leaders in the mainstream of art until one reaches the 1960s. From this point on, women artists seem to take the lead in arts because of their experimental and individualistic attitude and the fact that they move away from using the close-knit surface of painting that is a result of following the centuries-old arts of the Islamic Culture. The ingrained quality of surface decoration and schematic imagery which is a tradition in Turkey seems to have been overcome by several strong willed women using different media and techniques to express themselves.

This generation of women have a few common characteristics between them. They come from educated and above middle-class families; most are bilingual, and have travelled or studied in another country, and they are well informed about what is taking place in the mainstream of art. These women take an interest in status of women in their society, and with this knowledge and the influence of the contemporary issues, they have gradually developed a new synthesis in their content, although their medium and approach is different in each case. From their different points of view, they take up different social and cultural issues which merge with their own history, environment and approaches to working in specific sites. The artist, as an observer and social critic of today, observes the individual as a psychological and social being, thus arriving at the important question of identity. Some of these women further their creativity in writing, curating and organizing activities to provide a context for their work. This is never a group-action; each looks at the world around and is individually motivated by what they see.

So, in this article, the content of these women's artists work has been the first criteria in grouping their approaches and identifying the styles which each artist has followed.