ALEV AKGHOL

Istanbul – Dilan Jodi Saruhan was twenty-four years old when she was arrested in 2017, while she was a student in the Sculpture Department at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Marmara University in Turkey. She spent seven years in prison and was released in 2024, to find that her university education had been completed during the years she left behind, but her artistic production had not stopped.

The Kurdish artist Dilan Jodi Saruhan continued working even inside prison; she used to write and draw with materials she found or could transform and repurpose. The exhibition "A Possible Sky" looks at the interruptions and transformations that the artist's life witnessed, and the effects these fractures left on her works.

Dilan Saruhan was born in Istanbul in 1993 and grew up there. She is the daughter of a family that migrated from Iroh to Istanbul due to village evacuation operations. While she describes herself as a person "blended" in Istanbul, she confirms that the city where she was born and raised did not separate her from her family's past or from her Kurdish identity. This memory that she carried with her since childhood later became part of her artistic practice as well.

Today, Dilan Saruhan bases her works on memory, the body, identity, freedom, and human rights; explaining that social reality shaped her identity and personality, and therefore what she produces artistically cannot be separated from this reality.

When she entered prison, she was still a young sculptor at the beginning of her artistic education. The seven years she spent there were a period during which materials, place, and methods of production changed. Dilan Saruhan says that things that seem ordinary outside acquire different meanings inside prison. The eyeliner she used in prison was no longer just an eyeliner; the inverted umbrella turned into another form; while the embroidery she added to her clothes turned into another space for self-expression, which she was able to create for herself within the system of censorship.

For this reason, the wall for her does not mean merely an obstacle made of concrete. Just as it can be a boundary for a place, it can also turn into a boundary for identity, gender, or freedom. She noted that her exit from prison after seven years did not automatically make her feel safe and free. She links the wall that confronted her directly inside prison with the invisible boundaries that appear before her outside.

The First Exhibition She Was Able to Participate In

"A Possible Sky" is the first solo exhibition in which Dilan Saruhan participated in person. In one of her previous exhibitions, she was unable to participate because she was in prison, while she could not go to another exhibition held in France due to the continuation of her travel ban abroad. This time, she is present alongside her works, inside an exhibition whose story she formulated herself. The exhibition is scheduled to then move to meet the audience in Izmir and Amed as well.

Today, Dilan Saruhan continues her studies at the master's stage and plans to continue her artistic production in different fields. Alongside sculpture and painting, she talks about stories she wishes to turn into screenplays. As for art, she refuses to confine it to the traditional duality, asking: "Is art for art's sake or for society's sake?" confirming that the story of the individual and social reality are inseparable from one another.

She said that the name "A Possible Sky" appeared as a reflection of an idea she had been thinking about for a long time, explaining that the sky can express freedom for a person living in a closed place, while it may stir in a person outside a desire for openness, a feeling of spaciousness, and breathing.

She explained that she is talking about possibility, not certainty, as life at the current stage does not give us anything certain. From this standpoint, she searches for the possibility of a "sky" that has not yet been realized, and is not necessarily the sky we know or desire, but an idea that transcends the existing reality and opens the field to new possibilities. This is why she chose the name "A Possible Sky" for her exhibition, as an expression of aspiration for what could exist in the future despite not being realized at present.

Traces of Ten Years of Work Accumulated

Dilan Saruhan stressed that the exhibition does not consist only of the works she produced inside prison. "We are talking about a period extending for ten years during which concepts such as possibility, the body, boundaries, freedom, and the status of women were addressed. All of that formed a phase that transformed in parallel with the relationship I established with the place, and within the framework of the relationship between place, time, and material."

She pointed out that her approach to the materials used in her works changed during this period, noting that transforming the material instead of using it only in its original state became over time part of her style of production. "I began to look at the material not as something fixed, but as a means to discharge and express my emotional state. This ability to transform material began in prison, then reflected on my vision of production and became part of my working style; for me, the material changes and takes different forms according to time and place."

She gave examples of this with the cotton handkerchief, hair, and umbrella, explaining that things can transcend their original functions and turn into new forms and connotations; the handkerchief may turn through embroidery into a ritual, hair into a bridge, and the umbrella when inverted into a moving spider, meaning that the inorganic form can turn into an organic form.

She explained that in the period when photography was not possible, she resorted to embroidering on cotton handkerchiefs and undershirts to convey the image of the place to the outside, considering that playing with the language of material was a means of expressing her world and conveying what was happening in it.

"I See That as a Responsibility Falling on Me as an Artist"

She pointed out that the idea of "possibility" on which the exhibition is based also intersects with the current Kurdish issue and the path of solution and democracy, explaining that in the absence of certainty, the artist bears the responsibility of following developments, reading them, and anticipating what the next phase may carry.

She said that the artist should be able to look to the future, follow the course of events, and try, from their position, to open new windows to the outside and adapt to its variables. She added that the coincidence of the exhibition, with its title and subject, with this phase gave her a feeling of artistic responsibility, considering that this responsibility falls on the artist.

At the end of her interview, Dilan Jodi Saruhan confirmed that the exhibition can contribute to the phase that society is passing through, by opening new and different fields and spaces, which may allow other possibilities for thinking and expression.