Society in a mirror experience

By Heidi Trautmann

ArtRooms has become a venue of art for conceptional art, for young and exciting art. It is Oya Silbery who had the idea and deep wish to create a venue where new art conceptions can be brought to the public’s attention. I personally appreciate the new venue to be in Kyrenia a bit away from the ‘captivating’ influence of Nicosia as art centre. It is also thanks to Erbil Arkin from the Arkin Group - he studied art himself – sculpting I believe – and who is supporting the art activity in the basement of his lovely and delicately furnished and decorated ‘The House’ opposite the Colony Hotel which also belongs to the Arkin Group. In his introduction he stresses the importance of art and the necessity to support young artists, who he says will make great  

Özge Ertanın with her solo exhibition is the fifth event in the ArtRooms.  I usually go to the vernissage of a new exhibition because you will meet the artist and will have the opportunity to talk with other art lovers but I regretfully missed it.  However, I know Özge Ertanın quite well since I had a long talk with her some months ago.

She dedicated the exhibition to her father who suddenly died last year. I had the pleasure to meet him as well when I interviewed her. Her works in this her first solo exhibition are very strong and I like them very much, extraordinary, new, fresh and exciting. Art is the Way to my Truth, she once said to me, and this is what you feel when you see the paintings and art video installation.

She issues a warning: Look Again: Stop: Think before you go on: What are we doing with our society, with our life, our present, what will be our children’s future? Where are we as individuals in-between all those symbols and icons of modern life? Man between beton monstrosities and expensive cars, where is nature?

You will recognize Özge’s knowledge of architecture, the conceptional thinking and presenting her ideas with an architect’s clear understanding of spaces; she studied architecture at Istanbul Technical University and graduated with high honours from Fine Arts Faculty of the Near East University in Nicosia.

I want to recite parts of my interview with her to make you understand her work better:

“Özge Ertanın is a young woman with both feet planted firmly on earth, with a mouth she uses for speaking out loud the truth but also for laughing a lot, laughing with friends. Her laugh reaches her eyes. Sometimes you encounter people who radiate a positive aura which makes you immediately feel better and smile, she belongs to those…. that was my first impression of her. For our interview I met her at her parents’ shop in Nicosia, a silver shop ‘Prencess’ in the old part of Nicosia where you still hear old ghosts wander about or stand leaning against antique walls telling stories, watching the scene of tourists walking by, a certain noise which I am sure hasn’t changed over the last century. “You know, I have grown up in these streets, not really, but during the day, after school, when I was a child; we lived in Kozanköy first, and my parents had to take me with them every day to school and I spent the afternoon at the shop in Nicosia, so I know the place by heart and its changes over the years.”

Kozanköy, yes, a lovely and very special village, still today, with its houses scattered on the hills southwest of the Kyrenian mountains, with red cliffs in the village’s back.

“That is where I really grew up; we had our house very close to the cliff. My grandmother would pack a lunch packet for me and I would roam the area and watch out for animals or mushrooms in its time. I was the only girl among nine boys in our family clan, so you can imagine that I played boys’ games, climbing trees, did roller skating,  rough games such as baking köfte from mud to make my little brother eat them.” Here she laughs. “My grandmother’s house was just next to ours and I was just as much at home there, she knew so many stories. My childhood world was wonderful. I built whole cities from whatever I found and populated them with people, families, all from buttons, differently coloured buttons were different people; today children are robbed of their fantasy because of the internet, readymade food, easily digested.” Why buttons, I asked.

“My family owned a textile business in Nicosia. Later, when my brother also had to go to school, we moved to Küçük Kaymaklı; we missed our mountains very much, all of us.”

Dad Ertanın is with us in the shop, listens to us and makes the one or other remark. He is not happy how things are at the moment in Cyprus and he says that nothing has changed, and he tells me about the early bi-communal projects he had undertaken, and nothing had emerged from it. From the way Dad Ertanın speaks about things I gather that in his family all members were free to speak up and they both confirm it. Wonderful.

“My parents saw to it that I had a good education, besides school I had private tuition in painting with Özden Selenge and Emel Samioğlu, piano lessons with the teacher of Rüya Taner, ballet with Deniz, wife of Hilmi Özden, in my elementary years, the best of the best was just good enough for me. When I asked her what kind of books she was reading, just to know the tendency her thinking took, she answered: “As a child I was excited about Jules Verne and the Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, today I read sociology and philosophical books, Albert Camus, Jean Paul Sartre, Kafka….just to name a few, because of my art work, to learn how peoples’ minds work, their reaction to certain problematic situations, or just about human behaviour, there is always a pattern.” That is true for people living in close communities; a certain structure of behaviour manifests itself.  Özge’s free and realistic nature, her education at home, the open talks at home, have somehow accumulated and found an outlet in her art work today.”

As a conclusion I want to come back to the beginning of the interview, to my title: ‘Art is the Way to my Truth’ or should I say Art is my Way to the Truth? Our young artists are trying to see the reality and would not cover up the wounds of our society with a beautifying image, perhaps a cleansing effect? I wished they would succeed.

The exhibition is open until 31 January in the ArtRooms at The House from noon until midnight. You enter the exhibition rooms through the restaurant which is by itself a sight worth visiting.