In October 2013, I was invited to take on a group show curated by Firat ARAPOĞLU at the Bergsen Gallerı, an exhibition space recently opened in Istanbul; One of the ideas he wanted to explore what the sense of belonging and home that many of the artists chosen were examining in their works in one way another.
Sense of belonging is generally defined as the experience of personal involvement in a system or environment so that persons feel themselves to be an integral part of that system or environment. The exhibition propose that sense of belonging occurs in relation to various external referents. These referents include not only other persons and groups but also objects or environments.
The writer Wallace Stegner states in his book "The Angle of Repose" that "Home is a notion that only nations of the homeless fully appreciate and only the uprooted comprehend". And this is one of the ideas behind the work Fléches Sans Corps; in the present world, an increasingly number of people are experiencing the tragic effects of displacement after having being forced to leave their homes due to the devastating reality of war and poverty.
In many parts of the world, a colossal amount of people have lost their possessions, their farms, houses, jobs... many of them must have been exposed to an extreme level of horrors, perhaps even having their beloved perished, kidnaped, raped... yet, most of the persons have not been able to come to terms with the tremendous effect all this has had upon them.
Fléches Sans Corps is a video installation produced in response to this reality. Using a ship container as a metaphor to address the phenomenon of how many of these people have become double victims of an increasing market of trafficking in which local mafias charged them a huge amount of money to smuggle them into Europe.
In this journey, many of them will die in the desperate attempt for a safe life away from the horrors they have left behind.
