Dream & Fact —A Handbook of Forgiveness and A Handbook of Punishment

2021

Sabancı Üniversitesi Sakıp Sabancı Müzesi (Emirgan, İstanbul, Türkiye)

Based on the artist’s book Dream & Fact: A Handbook of Forgiveness and A Handbook of Punishment (2020), the installation includes prisoner photographs from the albums of Abdulhamid II, who was known for his interest in both pho-tography and detective novels. He had ordered all murder convicts in the country to be photographed with their hands showing, in preparation for an amnesty he planned to issue on the 25th anniversary of his accession to the throne. He had been moved by pseudo-scientific information he read in a crime novel that “any criminal with a thumb joint longer than the index finger joint, is inclined to mur-der.” On the first wall of the installation (Hayal), we see the hands of the above-mentioned prisoners awaiting pardon; on the second wall (Hakikat), there are chained prisoners who are all sentenced to death—having nothing to do with the amnesty in question. The artist's choice to leave the heads of the prisoners out of the frame, as if they had been cut off by the guillotine, is an effort to give them a second chance at life, to restore their freedom, and perhaps to try to forgive them. Furthermore, these photographs aim to examine oppressive practices and arbitrary arrest by building a bridge between the past and today, questioning no-tions of punishment and amnesty both on a personal and a societal level.

Detail

Title:

Dream & Fact —A Handbook of Forgiveness and A Handbook of Punishment

Date:

2021

Medium:

7 Fine Art photographic prints, 7 Diasec prints, 14 bulbs, 1 lightbox, 1 Dream & Fact Artist Book

Location:

Sabancı Üniversitesi Sakıp Sabancı Müzesi (Emirgan, İstanbul, Türkiye)

Credit:

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Dream & Fact —A Handbook of Forgiveness and A Handbook of Punishment

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