Last night, I washed the corpse we carried on our backs. I regretted it the moment I threw the bones into the tub, but it was already too late. I first chose the cleaner (older) ones; they were easy because the fibre-like fluffy bits that connect the joints had dried away. These easily washable bones had no lumps of soil mixed with blood and coalesced with the bone, from within which worms that had stiffened in the water appeared.
Before I began, I steeped the bones in warm water with vinegar. Then I added some bleach. In the meantime I cooked spaghetti. I swiftly swallowed up my pasta with garlic tomato sauce. And I thought: “There’s a dead horse in the bathtub, and my stomach couldn’t care less”. Then I drank a cup of coffee. When I had nothing left to waste my time on, I rolled up my sleeves. I put on my lemon-scented pink gloves and the apron Gümüş gave me. A while later, I looked for something like a mask, but couldn’t find anything suitable. Then I remembered what you said yesterday when I persistently wanted to learn the time of the island ferry: “You love playing it safe!” but I forgot about the mask, how about that?
Now as I recount this, the places where the corpse water splashed on my face are burning. I insist on calling it a corpse, yes; a dead horse, it was a corpse. It lay in my bathtub, torn into parts. The parts were then lined up on the black bin bags I spread out on the floor. Now they looked like remains from an archaeological excavation. I immediately took photographs of them as if it was a great deal. This time they had turned into seized ammunition; bullets large and small, hand grenades, pistols and Kalashnikovs.
A picture of what I am and what I will become;
the cartilage of the finger pressing down on the shutter button, a heap of bones brushing the pelvis…
I listened to Chicha Libre’s album Sonido Amazonico as I wrote this. The stove was burning in the studio. It was the 7th of April, and it was cold like winter outside.
Sevil Tunaboylu likes to keep her memory alive. She believes that the acts of producing and archiving against forgetting and enforced forgetting possess healing powers. ‘IN MY MIND’ is a diary she has weaved from both internal and external landscapes, moments from her life, people and things; in order to resist external factors threatening her identity and personal history.
Sevil Tunaboylu (b. 1982, Istanbul) received a BA in Painting from Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University. Mtaär Artist Initiative was established by Sevil Tunaboylu and co-founder Erkin Gören in Kadıköy / Moda in 2009, which hosted 13 exhibitions both national and international exhibitions between May 2009- June 2010. Some of these are : "No Exclusive Quarters For Families","Escape From the Civilisation" and "Local Illustrators" . Her first solo exhibition was ‘I Watched It As It Disappeared On the Horizon’ at SANATORIUM in 2012. In addition to these, her works were selected to various group exhibitions since 2003. Some of the major exhibitions Tunaboylu participated in are "Do Not Ask Why" Hafriyat Karaköy (2008), "Where the Fire Has Struck" Depo (2011), "Soft City" AlanIstanbul (2011), "Uncanny Games" PG Art Gallery (2011), "Distance and Contact" Baksı Museum (2012) and "Fictions and Dissensions" 3rd Çanakkale Biennial. Tunaboylu lives and works in Istanbul.
Deniz Koloğlu