Yesim Akdeniz by Kellie Buckley
Anthropocene? What is it?
The Anthropocene is a new epoch largely driven by our relationships and interactions between one another. It must be looked at through a social perspective in which we acknowledge the consumerist community that is shaped from these actions among each other. The actions spark a revolution between nature and our global community where we, as humans, inherently induce damaging, irreversible changes onto our environment through our personal selfish lenses.This selfish perspective is what defines our daily motivations and actions upon and within our individual communities. Every person’s actions are inclined toward a self-served outcome. In other words, we, living amongst each other, make choices that ultimately benefit our own selves in this consumerist world. We guide our actions based on what can “boost” our own personal identity. These actions allow us to secure ourselves as independent among our peers, because our consumerist outlook is constructed with an outline where we determine our identities by the material things that are tied to our own personal names.
However, this outlook it is not personal in any sense. Instead, it disregards any genuine interactions between our peers as it emphasizes the progression of accumulation of things. There is a socially acceptable platform for this lifestyle and it can be noted with these two main focuses:
- Throughout our lives, we are judged on how we have gradually increased in our abilities to participate in this consumerist society.
- We are able to participate this society by accepting that we are individually defined by what we own and not by how we genuinely care for the people and environment around us.
So How is Art Incorporated into the Anthropocene?
Fortunately, art provides a marvelous platform where we can recognize the underlying damages that are being continually molded into this current epoch. It allows us to quickly grasp the progression of harm our actions every day repeatedly leave on our individual relationships, social community, and consumerist-destroyed environment. Each medium of art has this opportunity to display an international problem to the world.Anthropocene art, then, should holistically speak to a very broad audience including all groups of people that help make up humanity. There must be a unifying message behind the pieces of art since every individual included in this global community is responsible – to varying degrees – for the damaging effects outlining the Anthropocene epoch. A universal calming familiarity to a work of art would allow artists to speak directly to a more general audience; ultimately this would allow artists to create easily interpreted pieces that moreover strike fear and stimulate social change in us.
And These Pieces of Art Look Like What?
You and Me
Using subjects as symbols of a contemporary consumerism culture, Yesim Akdeniz is able to indicate familiar feelings to a broad audience. She uses a house made explicitly with the use of modern architecture to represent this idea of consumerism involved in our relationships between one another. The telephone is another subject she uses to symbolize the communication aspect within consumerism. Effective communication in the Anthropocene is very clearly altered in an epoch where numerous societies throughout the world are influenced by the doubtful actions of our peers around us. The genuine acknowledgement for the person as they are has been replaced by acknowledging a person by what they own. We communicate with our peers and instead of conversing out of sincere care and respect for those people, we engage in conversation and look at our peers - defined by their material possessions.Last Dance in Taksim
Similarly, Akdeniz uses modern architecture as a symbol to represent a consumerism culture in her piece Last Dance in Taksim. She illustrates a woman reaching down to the modern house; however, the woman's head is not included in the picture so that the woman's body can be indicative of humanity as a whole. Each person within this world is motivated selfishly, reaching for new additions to their materialistic identity. Akdeniz portrays this idea in a quite simple setting, but is able to capture the audience's attention easily. There is an alluring realness behind the message that the painting portrays and while the painting as a whole is abstract, the underlying message is obviously alarming.Who is Yesim Akdeniz?
Yesim Akdeniz is a 39-year-old painter who lives and works in Istanbul, Turkey. She began her artistry at a young age after attending Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, an internationally renowned art school, in 2002 when she was just 24 years old. Moreover, she was granted the opportunity to participate in the De Ateliers two-year art program in Amsterdam where she could build her own personal network between peer young artists as well as already acclaimed artists. With this opportunity, she could begin sharing her work in exhibitions at a young age. As her career progressed, she continued to participate in solo and group art exhibitions throughout Europe frequently as well as around the world. Her works - all displayed on her website - not only illustrate a particular and uncommon glimpse into the Anthropocene, but she also devotes an entire series to this perspective – the Adventures in the Anthropocene series.To get a better understanding of how Akdeniz's brain works, watch her interview at Pi Artworks in Cologne where she discusses her series, A Modern Misery Court. Akdeniz has been frequently and consistently featured in Pi Artworks exhibitions throughout Europe. This specific series is only on example of many where Akdeniz conveys contemporary ideas through her use of modern subjects and symbolism in her pieces of art.
She uses modern architecture to replace human positions and relations among one another. This modern architecture is very clear in her paintings and correlates well with the contemporary designs that are present in this Anthropocene epoch. Akdeniz also does a great job in depicting this fabricated human relationship through the abstract figures painted. While portraying the Anthropocene's shift in perspective through her characterization of modern architecture, the abstract nature of the painting only furthers the definition of the Anthropocene. Although set with calming and simple colors, the abstract settings and subjects establish a tone of unfamiliarity and weakened environmental interaction for the pieces where the audience perceives this portrayal of their environment with fear.
What type of Fear is Akdeniz Depicting?
Mr. Jung and Me series
We’ve talked about the idea of Akdeniz striking a subtle sense of fear in her paintings. A sub-series, Mr. Jung and Me, incorporated into her series Adventures in the Anthropocene, serves in this manner by using safari animals as symbols to invoke a more powerful, while still abstract, sense to the works. The painting - painted in 2014 - is illustrated as a secluded, simple room where the animals stand or sit on top of a very minimal counter space of a small side table; the miniature modern houses in the paintings contrast these safari animals. Small in size, the modern houses which are symbols of our consumerist culture, indicate Akdeniz’s message that our material things are of lowest priority. On the other hand, the safari animals symbolize our community’s environment, how big in importance it is, and how little of a pedestal we prioritize it on.With this being said, the paintings altogether give this idea of an imbalance in powers. Looking at the title of the series – Mr. Jung and Me – we can also assume that Akdeniz is drawing ideas from the great psychologist, Carl Jung. I think by tying Jung into this painting’s message, she is guiding the audience to contemplate Jung’s psychological process of individuation which looks at “a process of transformation whereby the personal and collective unconscious are brought into consciousness” ("Individuation"). She frames the subjects portrayed in the paintings as “Mr. Jung” and his ideas; there is a transformation in ideas when she presents the issue of prioritization to the audience. Meanwhile, in the first painting of the sub-series, a person peeks behind a curtain indicative of the audience and their hesitancy to approach Jung’s psychological idea of individuation.
Dance of the Last Panther
Akdeniz similarly conveys a message of fear through the issue of prioritization in her piece, The Dance of the Last Panther. In this piece, she again uses a safari animal of a panther as a symbol to depict the environment and other living species around us. The board of post-it note mementos hung up on the wall and the ornate sofa symbolize the consumeristic culture that she also emphasizes in the Mr. Jung and Me sub-series. The panther, hiding behind the sofa depicts Akdeniz’s idea that we have not only de-prioritized the importance of our environment and nature, but that we have also hidden any opportunity for us to effectively create change. We see the tail end of the environment, as we do with the panther, but we do not look at it in the face and acknowledge its vital importance. Instead, we act out of our selfish inclinations and deflect the alarming facts informing us of the NEED for change in this Anthropocene era.
But What About the Other Art Forms?
Yes, there are other Anthropocene pieces of art that convey messages quite different from Akdeniz’s works. All pieces of effective Anthropocene art are important in their essence, since they can each speak to different audiences and ultimately evoke constructive change. However, Akdeniz’s almost surrealist paintings are particularly effective in sparking this transformation of ideas regarding our consumerist interactions between on another. Surrealism, a movement that began in the 1920’s, seeks “to overthrow the oppressive rules of modern society by demolishing its backbone of rational thought” ("Surrealism"). Akdeniz’s pieces clearly depict this idea through her abstract settings containing much symbolism. A piece of art that can overthrow the “rational” ideas of our current society and can furthermore alter the pattern of materialistic relationships is Anthropocene art. Akdeniz beautifully illustrates this directive while speaking to a global audience.Works Cited
Primary Sources:
Akdeniz, Yesim. Adventures in the Anthropocene series – Dance of the Last Panther. 2016.http://www.yesimakdeniz.com/index.php/project/tablo_1560.jpg. Assessed 1 December 2017.
Akdeniz, Yesim. Adventures in the Anthropocene series - Last Dance in Taksim. 2016. Pi
Artworks, http://www.artnet.com/artists/yesim-akdeniz/adventures-in-the-anthropocene-series-last-dance-a-k8ptcn8wKUMQa-ZtH7IKrQ2. Assessed 4 November 2017.
Akdeniz, Yesim. Adventures in the Anthropocene series – You and Me. 2013.
http://www.yesimakdeniz.com/index.php/adventures-in-the-anthropocene/picc1.jpg. Assessed 4 November 2017.
Akdeniz, Yesim. Mr. Jung and Me Series. 2014. http://www.yesimakdeniz.com/index.php/
adventures-in-the-anthropocene/. Assessed 15 November 2017.
Secondary Sources:
Akdeniz, Yeşim. Yeşim Akdeniz. PI Artworks Istanbul/London, http://www.yesimakdeniz.com/.Assessed 4 November 2017.
“Carl Jung.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Jung. Assessed 5 December 2017.
“De Ateliers.” TransArtists. http://www.transartists.org/air/de-ateliers. Assessed 30 November 2017.
Hammond, Marit. “Governance in the Anthropocene: The Role of the Arts.” Inhabiting the Anthropocene. 24 Aug. 2016. https://inhabitingtheanthropocene.com/2016/08/24/governance-in-the-anthropocene-the-role-of-the-arts/. Assessed 2 November 2017.
“Individuation.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individuation#Carl_Gustav_Jung. Assessed 5 December 2017.
“Modern Architecture.” National Trust for Historic Preservation. https://savingplaces.org/modern-architecture#.Wf4RuBNSzR2. Assessed 2 November 2017.
“Surrealism.” MoMALearning. https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/themes/surrealism. Assessed 5 December 2017.
“Yesim Akdeniz.” Artsy. https://www.artsy.net/artist/yesim-akdeniz. Assessed 1 November 2017.
“Yesim Akdeniz.” PiArtworks. http://www.piartworks.com/english/sanatcilar_det1.php?recordID=Ye%FEim%20AKDEN%DDZ. Assessed 30 November 2017.
“Yesim Akdeniz at Pi Artworks at Art Cologne 2017.” Youtube, uploaded by VernissageTV, 29 April 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ajfwM2N2vQ.
