Visiting the Harem of Ýnci Eviner: A journey to utopia By Ayþegül Baykan Inside the darkened theatre, from the moment it starts, Harem grabs you with the uncanny feeling of gazing at the domestic intimacy of an interior space full of distant lives of other women. Yet while it draws you into the vast space represented, with wide-open areas in which you might roam nooks and corners, hide, work, play or intimately embrace another, the work challenges and refuses easy access into its underlying structures of meaning. Space and time constitute the two axis around which the work evolves. In critical discourse, the organization of space in relation to corporeal bodies is vital and, during the last few decades, it has become central to a multiplicity of readings into the politics and meaning of space as the foundational element of social and gendered praxis. Harem-space is also a contentious subject matter with ideological and political constructs in reference to different sexes on the one hand and different cultures with geographical references on the other. In Eviner’s Harem time is ambiguous and indefinite as well. After the first few seconds it materializes, the image on the screen, Antoine-Ignace Melling’s drawing of the interior of the Summer Harem at Saraglio Point, a representation dating to the end of the 18th century, disappears and re-emerges with new –modern- bodies in motion. This transition, however, to a different zone (the space is the same) is not a change in linear time and does not employ historical narrative. Not only that time for her is not directional, it vanishes altogether with the vanishing of figures drawn by Melling. One is left reminded of –spaces- of times past, but does not feel a yearning for the past as in a sense of loss, nor identifies with a present. Repetition takes the place of time as a trope to tell a story; repetitions in the images of women across space, in their uniform outfits (with grey, simple tops and pants), and patterns of action in work or in play. Moreover, when the five minutes duration of the work is complete, it starts all over again, repeating non-stop, until the viewer makes – un-willingly- the decision to leave, hence rendering the time of an ending arbitrary. Below, I engage in another form of repetition by employing the discursive economy of harem-space. I believe, Eviner’s Harem refuses the historical and hegemonic limitations of the sign of the harem-space and, on the contrary, re-claims it through transgressive modes. To come to this conclusion, I try to disentangle the threads of themes around space and gender and weave them back again. My aim is to reflect on the alternative layers of meaning ‘space’ presents in this work, and to offer a reading of it as a space of utopia, a possibility of an alternative and emancipatory –political- order to our habitual practices of everyday lives. Ever since it was published in1981, Malek Alloula’s Le Harem Colonial has been celebrated as a text that reveals the Western gaze through the desire it holds for the colonized people’s otherness. (Alloula 1986, in English translation) As this book reveals, by reference to the Arab women’s –erotic- representations through post-cards, the culture of the colonial power attempted to turn the difference of the interior space of the colonies to knowable and controllable objects. By way of entering into the harem, not only women but the men of colonies were debased as well. The imaginary of the West on the interior space of distant cultures of the colonies constructed fantasies of gendered bodies, regulated through space and the harem in particular, as sexualized objects rather than through social practice. The following text by Reina Lewis sums the depth of appropriation of the harem in Orientalist discourse: Alternative representations of gender and space are crucial to undo these imaginaries. This requires a challenge to fantasies such as those listed above. These fantasies, to begin with, originate from the outside of the space of cultural and social practices, foreign to the gaze appropriating them in such hegemonic modes. Therefore, not a simple reversal of meaning but a re-appropriation might offer a starting point to claim the harem-space a new. In addition, a critical undoing of the history of the male hegemonic definition and design of space that has reduced women to a singular definition of her sex and to the domesticity of home in general is essential. Robin Evans’s work is exemplary in this direction. (Evans 2009) In comparing paintings and architectural plans from 16th century Italy, especially of Raphael’s works, with 19th century house plans of England, including those of William Morris, Evans points to the differences in the spatial organisation, social arrangements and formations, and the recasting of the patterns of domestic life. (Ibid, p. 78) In the former, he observes, there is a general distribution of movement across entire space of buildings. The common spaces of movement, such as the hallways, and inhabited spaces –of rooms- are not distinguished. This allows movement of people across rooms freely and through many doors that bind each room with others and with the general areas. Evans offers a cultural frame that matches to this form of organisation: “The matrix of connected rooms is appropriate to a type of society which feeds on carnality which recognises the body as the person, and in which gregariousness is habitual.” (Ibid, p.93) The architectural form corresponding to this culture drew people together and recognized their passions and carnality while, the 19th century house plans in England withheld life at a distance. Inhabited spaces of rooms became distinct spaces from the passages and corridors that simply functioned as routes and exhibition spaces for pictures and statues, but not engaging with the lives of passions and movements. Evans argues that bodies stood not as an event but as vessels for mind and spirit, occupying rooms with single doors that opened only to corridors, with limited access to different forms of life and emphasised privacy. (Ibid, p.93) The house plans of the new modern world, as described by Evans, reflect the binary divisions that were commonly associated with modernity of the times, namely the distinctions between mind and body, knowledge and passions, and the public and private worlds of the social, political and economic spheres. These binaries, on the other hand, reflected on to different sexes with matching valuations. In the process, Jane Rendell notes, the domestic sphere tended to become the subordinate realm of the female sex while city space prioritized men. (Rendell 2000) Rendell criticizes the paradigm of separate spheres and argues “that the gendering of space can be understood as a form of choreography, a series of performed movements between men and women, both real and ideal, material and metaphoric, which are constructed and represented through social relations of looking and moving – exchanging, consuming and displaying.” (Ibid, p.135) It is Luce Irigaray, who has inspired Rendell and many other feminist writers like her, interested in the relationship of sexed bodies to space and in an architectural theory critical of static organisations of space. Irigaray defines bodies and spaces as fluid material processes, which are dynamic and permeable. (Rawes 2007, p.34) As fluid matter, women are not only active, intelligent and sensing, but also desiring. They negotiate between the intellectual realm and the embodied realm of the senses and feelings. (Ibid, p.42) Crucial in the making of architectural interiors for Irigaray, “desire is positive, ethical and non-hierarchical, and does not exclude intellectual thinking. It is an extremely important idea in her writing because it represents a key form of corporeal energy, agency or power in the sexed subject.” (Ibid, pp. 42-43) In conclusion, spatial relationships drive from intimate encounters between embodied subjects, “a new positive ‘economy’ of touch and sensation which is created through shared intimate spatial relationships and histories.” (Ibid, p.48) This view runs against the grain of thought, which has approached the architectural space through function and form and ignored the complex praxis of the domestic sphere of life based on such an economy. Or starting from the other end, as in the case of the imaginary fantasy of harems, the female bodies have been reduced to mere objects of passions and the significance of architectural space of social praxis, social and economic production and reproduction, have been hurled to the backdrop of analysis. It is necessary, therefore, to find and recognise a representational space that does not disappear in the abyss of these two alternatives. Melling’s drawing embodies one such representation. Orhan Pamuk’s book on Istanbul, a collection of autobiographical reminiscences and critical analysis of former representations of the city in works of art and literature, reserves a chapter on Melling and an analysis of his drawing of the Summer Harem. (Pamuk 2006) Pamuk calls attention to the gothic space with its symmetrical simplicity and notes that, contrary to other representations of harem-space, the intimacy and touch between subjects appear to the side of the drawing, thus avoiding exoticisation. Ýnci Eviner seizes this site and further emphasizes the women in praxis, superimposed on the same drawing, hence creating an inter-textual referencing. Her women not only engage in work and social activities but play as well, including in sexual encounters. Her images are accompanied by the routine –repeating- sounds of movement and an occasional sigh, a private sense of sound that reminds deep intimacy and a level of private existence. By taking away the opulent layers of clothing and colour away, she has also offered a representation that avoids the signs of a hierarchical ordering. Hence, with no master and slave, the space becomes non-hierarchical and vast enough to allow different forms of activities that revolve around the daily lives of women, each an agent on her own right. I interpret Ýnci Eviner’s Harem not as an ontological space but a metaphorical site, or a non-space, which is utopia. However, this, like other feminist utopias of its resemblance that Sargisson analyses, is not an ideal space or a blueprint for the future, and does not entail a –political- closure. (Sargisson 1996) It is an alternative cognitive space to organize life by tracing and deconstructing former representations. We can easily employ Sargisson’s definition to our subject: “Utopian thought I take to be the experience and expression of utopian desires, or the engagement in utopian dreaming.” (Ibid, p.2) The principle element of this utopian dreaming in constructing meaning is to avoid all binary oppositions and hierarchical structures to, then, become “transgressive of and potentially subversive of dominant symbolic orders, thought structure and other systems of representation.” (Ibid, p.99) A visit to Eviner’s Harem is an experience that you leave with the lingering feeling of the sigh that you have heard and the choreography you have viewed, but not sure how to interpret. It is a sound of resolve to the joys and pains of life and to join in the kind of utopia she calls for. Many thanks are in order for Eviner’s generous hospitality. I leave with all my heart. Bibliography Alloula, Malek (1986) The Colonial Harem, Manchester: Manchester University Press. ............................................................................................................................................................... Before Language Who were you before you were born? What is your original nature? Respond with the “Unknowing Mind,” Buddhists say, the one that “adjusts your pillow in the night. “To know without knowing, what must you first forget? What lost knowledge might an artist—dreming of water—chose to reconstruct? Carol Becker..........Villa Serbelloni July 26, 2000 ............................................................................................................................................................ Inci Eviner at Monique Goldstrom “Playing with line, I imagine myself as one of those old-time storytellers-a storyteller, how ever, who cannot control the story and is eventually swallowed by it.” In this satatement, which accompanied her first New York solo exhibition, Istanbul-based artist Inci Eviner signals her drawing. Filled with elaborate organic forms and populated by quirky human/animal hybrids, her pen-and-ink drawings and watercolors are often whimsical and occasionally harrowing. These unlikely works combine nods to Sigmar Polke and Luise Bourgeois with references to the rich visual heritage of Turkey. Eviner grew up in the Turkish countryside, studied art in Istanbul
and, since the 1980s, has exhibited widely in Europe and Asia. When I
visited her studio a few years ago, it was overflowing with works of
all kinds: introspective figurative paintings, dark, sheath- At Goldstrom, she presented more than 70 recent works on paper. In one group, sketchily rendered female ninjas, their eyes peering from beneath slitted hoods, are incongruously overlaid with tropical flowers. Another group of square drawings, executed in thick black lines and splattered here and there with drops of blood-red ink, features shrouded women, anxious cherubs, and part-human, part animal amalgams. These works utilize a simplified graphic approach to evoke ominous emotional undertones. In one drawing, we see a cloaked female figure whose head is encased in a tiny house and whose robes are bursting into flames. Also on view were 24 mesmerizing small-format works on handmade marbleized paper, each work consisting of a pair of loosely related drawings. In these, pandas and various mysterious figures drift through eerie dreamscapes. That Eviner’s freewheeling visual method has not rendered her oblivious
to the events of the day was evident in a wall-size photomontage work,
Explosive Heart, that was on viev concurrently at Apex Art in Tribeca.
In it, the artist digitally assembled images of a host of innocent looking
children who all prove, as the viever realized with a start, to have
explosives strapped to their chests in the manner of suitcide bombers.
For all of her imaginative ramblings through time and space, Eviner is
an artist whose work clearly registers the travails of the present moment. ...............................................................................................................................................................
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