Seçil Yaylalı

Konditori

2017, Malmö

mixed materials

with the support of Galleri CC

The art space Galleri CC, Malmö, is located inside a former Turkish bakery. For a month, Konditori brought its rooms back to their original function, recalling the memory of the place through symbolic images of Turkish social and political current events. Konditori created an interactive environment over the space: in the main room, some rolling pins transformed into stamps allowed the visitors to participate in the project by printing on sheets of paper. The prints reproduced graphic and personalized versions of images that Turkish media were spreading about some of the national news: the terrorist attacks in Suruç, the civilian's displacement and deaths caused by military operations in Silopi, Kurdistan; the violence and gender crimes; the protests of civil servants sacked within the broad government crackdown; the heavy gentrification of Sulukule neighborhood and the movement of Turkish mothers for their missing children in Istanbul. Reproducing some faces and places from contemporary tragic history was conceived as a collective act of memory and resistance.

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The story related to each image was explained by writing with small captions, installed on the walls of the next room, where a buffet of many traditional Turkish sweets was set up. The last room exhibited a video interview of Hamid, who arrived in Malmö twenty years earlier from Iran, fleeing the war. After leaving the tragic reality of his homeland, he had to face enormous difficulties in Sweden, being a migrant. Although they may not be visible or affect society as a whole, each place carries its complexities, obstacles, and dramas.  As soon as he moved to Malmö, he started baking sweets in one of the city's bakeries.