• Zehra Doğan : Art at the heart of History
Sunday 21th October 2018 • 2 PM – 5 PM
Pays de Morlaix (France)
Zehra Doğan is a graduate of Fine Arts and did not go to a journalism school. Yet it was with three reports on Yezidi women that she won a prestigious journalism prize, the Metin Göktepe. It was also her desire to « go out », as she said at the time of this distinction, that made her co-founder of a women’s news agency. And it is also drawing that has taken over from the pen and the camera, when words are no longer enough to describe the unspeakable.
And Zehra has been excelling since then, both on her digital tablet, by a drawing which will lead her in prison, as with few means, canvas, newsprint, and even found paper.
She is in line with the present, testifying it in urgency, even with this lack of means. It is each time an act of resistance… a will of transmission. She archives a reality past under silence, the daily life of exactions and oppression, as much as that of women, deeply inscribed in her approach. But her paintings, her works on paper, go well beyond « journalist’s drawings ». Zehra builds a pictorial work in its own right, step by step, with and under the conditions that are made to him. The artist is present at all stages of her resistance.
His work affectively reaches the public whether they are art lovers or not. The force of his expression acts as a slap that awakens, and bluntly opens eyes to truths. Visitors question, inform themselves, discover, understand, and do not leave the exhibition unharmed.
Zehra also stresses: « History is written by dominants, therefore it is erroneous, distorted, missing. For example, in History written by men, patriarchy made the woman disappear from History. For Art, it is the same, it is absolutely necessary that we reappropriate it… »
Can Zehra be classified in contemporary art? Yes, because she’s at the heart of present history. No, because she does not use commercial codes, she draws permanently from her roots which make her present, she is not « out of culture », nor a universal globalist. So, unclassifiable, Zehra?
Speakers:
• Gianluca Costantini | Italian activist artist and graphic designer journalist. « Histoire de résistance ». His website gianlucacostantini.com was censored by Erdoğan since three years ago) (Italie)
• Niştiman Erdede | Activist artist, Kurdish political refugee. (Switzerland)
• Engin Sustam | Researcher in social sciences and specialist in Kurdish territory. Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts in Istanbul and EHESS. Associate Researcher at IFEA Istanbul. Author of « Kurdish Art and Subalternity between Violence and Resistance ».(France)
• Table under construction. Other guests awaiting confirmation.
Moderation:
Mathieu Ducoudray | Director of Livres et lecture en Bretagne.
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