ELİF AKGÜL

Istanbul- the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on 25 November 2021, the members of the “Time to Speak” project issued an open call to women artists to select the slogans of feminist activists groups. After the selection of the slogans, they held an exhibition called “Time to Speak” in the Şişli district of Istanbul and Dersim province. The exhibition is currently available to view online.

The project team, consisting of Meral Akkent, Şehlem Kaçar, Merve S. Öztürk, and Burcu Yılmaz, has displayed the artworks of the artists on the billboards, virtual exhibition and published the artworks in a book. “We wanted to decorate many cities of Turkey with feminist slogans and artworks in which women are the subjects and produced by their own works,” Şehlem Kaçar told us.

Stating that they prioritize inclusiveness as the project team, Şehlem Kaçar told us the difficulties they faced due to this priority:

“After discussing with the Istanbul Women's Culture Foundation on including Kurdish and Armenian languages in the exhibition, we stopped working with the foundation but we kept working to hold the exhibition. We met with eight municipalities. Some municipalities, which were interested in the project, decided to not support the project. We think they decided to not support the project because of the rainbow flag, the Kurdish and Armenian languages.”

Women chose the slogans

Stating that they met with many women+ artists from different cultures, identities, and age groups before November 25, Şehlem Kaçar said that they then issued an open call. “We prepared a pool of slogans of feminist activists’ groups and we asked the artists to produce artworks by choosing a slogan from this pool of slogans. Amateur or professional women + artists chose slogans from this pool of slogans and produced their own artworks. Then, we prepared billboards with these artists. These billboards were placed both in Dersim and Şişli.”

The principles of diversity and inclusiveness

Underlining that displaying the artworks in the public sphere was important for them, Şehlem Kaçar said, “Inclusiveness was the most important criteria for us. We paid attention to including all ethnic groups in the project.” Stating that 158 women responded to their open call, Şehlem Kaçar said that they selected the participants of the project according to the principles of diversity and inclusiveness. “We didn’t select the artworks that contain images of women in which women are shown helpless, fearful, and powerless. That's why the exhibition of these artworks and the method we followed has been very instructive for the artists as well as for us. We selected the artworks by discussing them with artists based on ethical principles. There were artworks, which aren’t homophobic or transphobic and don’t contain discriminatory attitudes towards gender-based violence.”

The virtual exhibition is currently available on konusmazamani.com.