Özlem Akman, who has been working with felt, which is mostly known as a textile material in the geography we live in, will present her works to art lovers with an exhibition to be held for street animals. The exhibition, which will be held in cooperation with İzmir Social Development and Business Cooperative SKOOP and EGİAD, awaits its visitors at the EGİAD Social and Cultural Activities Center in Konak İzmir during 16-17-18 May.
We are sure that everyone who reads these lines will find a share for themselves in the story of the emergence of the works. Although Özlem Akman does not want to call herself an “artist” and her work a “work”, this story is actually the story of all of us…
Saying “I divided my life into phases”, Özlem Akman started the felt art by making faceless dolls. So why didn’t the dolls he made have faces?
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Actually, “faceless babies” emerge from an educational doctrine called Waldorf Philosophy. We have all seen these “expressionless” dolls, most of which are made of cloth, at least once in our lives. The reason why Özlem Akman started to produce these dolls with felt is the kind of thing that will warm your heart:
“I divided my life into phases, because we grow a little bit more with each important event. Of course, having a child is the thing that raises us women the most and also scares us the most. This is the first phase. However, in this exhibition, you will not see what I did in the first phase, because I never intended to exhibit them during the period I was doing -with the effect of the feelings I had. I gave some as gifts and kept some for myself. Because it reminded me of a very important time. When I gave birth to my son Bora in 2016…”
Would you stop loving a child even if he doesn’t look like anyone else? Let’s get the answer to this question from a mother:
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There was an attempt to emulate something. In fact, I was doing the same thing, “I have the same eyes, the same feet, he got the hair color from his grandfather”… Then I said to myself, “Wouldn’t we still love if the child didn’t look like anyone else… Of course we would.”
“While I didn’t tell anyone about all this so it wouldn’t be a shame, I took my felts to my workshop and started drawing faceless babies and families… Because if we didn’t shape them, they would still be ‘little creatures to be raised and bonded with with great love’ in our eyes. forever. It was with these frightening feelings that I started making a lot of babies. These dolls, called Waldorfs, may have had many philosophies, meanings, but they had only one meaning to me.”
“If we didn’t get underfoot one too many times, our children would emerge as much healthier individuals. That’s why I didn’t compare Bora to anyone. Whatever she looks like, my only duty is to be a mother, no matter what, I would love her very much.”
However, in this exhibition, not dolls and human figures made of felt, but animals that should have a greater say in nature than we do appear before us. So why?
This period, which Özlem Akman calls the “second phase” in her felt works, concludes with the founding of BORART, an art initiative named after her son. However, his work during this period actually begins with the pandemic that has locked us all in our homes and permanently changed the world. For this reason, “The second phase actually wasn’t very funny.” Akman says and adds:
“While we were trying to fight an invisible enemy in our homes, we watched doctors, nurses, science and the whole world fight outside. We even saw how small this world is and how insignificant we are, so all of us are depressed. Maybe one year ago, while everyone was sending messages to each other saying world peace, we couldn’t even go out for tea in front of the door. We were in a very sad state, there was nothing to laugh at, because death is nothing to laugh at (probably).”
There was a very meaningful connection between the pandemic and animals that not everyone could see. While we were closing in our homes in fear, nature began to come to its senses:
You remember the days when the new normal was not new anymore. As we got used to the absence of our lost freedoms, nature was actually free. A series of variants that were terrible for us were no longer so terrible for nature. According to Akman, we all moved away from the “normality of being human” during this period:
“I think hiding in our homes out of fear was the scariest part of the job, because we lost all our freedoms. We are far from normal. When I say normality, I am not talking about mediocre normality, but the normality of being human. When our greatest luxury was to look out the window, of course, I used the luxury of looking out of the window a lot, and something caught my attention there; nature had come into its own. The colors were brighter, the sky was bluer, the green was greener… In fact, I saw how undesirable we are in nature and how forced we exist. It was painful to witness, but it was nothing new.”
Animals, which most of us cannot see with the world’s eyes, first turn into felt figures and then into a very strong representation of “women” in this exhibition…
While describing her works to be exhibited, Özlem Akman distinguished men He mentions that “there are actually a lot of strong and special women living in the soul of every woman”, but while reaching this conclusion, he sets out from the animals with whom we share this world:
“As a humanity that transgressed our limits, while we do all kinds of harm, we naturally touch the sea, the green and everywhere in nature. It was normal for him to want to throw us up. I realized that we also forget about our true partners, man is a selfish creature. However, there were animals in this nature that were at least as entitled as us, perhaps more deserving. However, since we usurped everyone’s space and right, of course, we were the most unwanted creature.”
“I wanted to sit down and give to nature what I got from nature, and I started making animals, but I realized that I had never seen the animals that I created with the eyes of the world before. While I was thinking about why I am doing these things, I realized that my work actually had a meaning. It was us women, this meaning.”
“A lot of strong and special women live in the soul of every woman. A mother whose child you harm turns into a lion just like that…”
“I don’t know if there is another male race among living creatures that waits with endless loyalty at the head of his egg when the female goes hunting…”
“In the life of a repetitive woman, I realized that we were so bored trying to suggest the same things every day, and I dreamed of horses, running in an endless green with a terrible sense of freedom…”
“The most beautiful were the birds that everyone should know how to love; because if you squeeze too hard, they would die very quickly. They had to be very sheltered, very sensitive.”
“At the same time, they were free and returned to the place where they ate, built their nests with their mouths, and fed their young with their mouths.”
“Motherhood is really an art; Felt & Animal Busts of Özlem Akman, which will be organized to support stray animals. The exhibition awaits its visitors at the EGIAD Social and Cultural Activities Center in Konak, Izmir on May 16-17-18. You are all invited!
You can follow Özlem Akman’s BORART Instagram account, where she shares her work, here, and you can find more detailed information about her and her work on the official website of BORART.
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