CAMOUFLAGE, 1986

CAMOUFLAGE, 1987 canvas, plaster busts, plywood, house paint 231 x 279 x 28 cm

This work came as a response to militarism and its oppressive ways controlling Turkish society at the time. Military service was mandatory for every man when they reached the age 20. I was studying art college when I reached the military age and started getting letters requesting my surrender. As a college student you were allowed to postpone every year but the amount of bureaucratic paper work one had to endure made it feel one completely helpless. Young men’s lives were all demarcated with the military service.

Turkish traditionally used olive drab color uniforms fashioned and unchanged since the second world war. About around mid 1980’s this changed. We started seeing off duty soldiers on the streets clad in camouflage uniforms. We were only familiar with this woodland camouflage because of the Hollywood movies about Vietnam war or horrifying scenes of Israeli military on TV. Either way camouflage meant we were at war and we were as a full fledge war was going on between the Turkish military and Kurdish guerilla with losses on both sides as well as high number of civilian casualties in Kurdish regions of the country. All these aspects were cyristallised in my head and became this installation made of the busts I made of myself, the stand and the canvas drape all submerged in woodland  camouflage paint. V.A.