We had a conversation with Turkish graphic designer Semra Güler and Palestinian visual artist Samara Sallam about Billboard Istanbul Project.
Billboard Istanbul Project aims to increase awareness and encourage public debates on gender issues, as well as bringing contemporary art to a wider audience of all genders and ages.
How did your collaboration in the framework of Billboard Istanbul 2020 start?
Semra Güler: As a result of Hanne Lise Thomsen's collaboration with Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, we became a part of this event as the Graphic Design Department. In line with this relationship established within the scope of Billboard Istanbul Festival 2020, we carried out the project with the students within the scope of the lecture.
Samara Sallam: I have collaborated with the artist Hanne Lisa Thomsen before, we have met through friends and I participated in her project Passage 2016 . I guess this is where our collaboration started.
Can you please tell us about the works of students attending this project?
Semra Güler: I attended Billboard Istanbul 2020, where the expression language is photography, with my students taking the ‘Design Process in Promotional Photography” course that I am teaching. We carry out different photographic projects with students every semester. The first project topic of my 2019-2020 spring semester course was Billboard Istanbul 2020 Festival.
It was an exciting process and the students were very interested. In my opinion, the subject was well understood by them and brought to light the discomforts they were not aware of. They had the opportunity to be a part of this project and have their say. They handled the issue from different perspectives. All the participating students progressed by using their own bodies. As well as photographs trying to draw attention to the subject by displaying their bodies as a product, we completed this process with photographic works that describe the destructive effect of abuse on the female body by imprisoning herselfs.
How would you like to contribute to gender equality and art in public space with this project?
Semra Güler: I think that besides the importance of supporting projects involving social issues and the responsibility of being a part of it, the projected awareness has not been achieved. The socioeconomic conditions we are in, prevent some social events and individual concerns begin. When the speed factor is added to these concerns, the state of being aware becomes very difficult. As a result, the more people stand in front of the billboards and think about it, the more we will contribute.
Samara Sallam: I started taking self portrait at the same time when I started questioning my identity as a political body, and here where the gender concept usually takes an important part of that complex structure, I think the fight for acknowledging my political body is very connected with the fight for gender freedom and gender equality, they are both against autherity and discrimination, and then when the public space hold this conversation, the border between the privet body and the public body disappear, and the space become more fluid, political, and open. And that's what art tries to do in my opinion.
What are the main learnings from this collaboration with an art academy from another country?
Semra Güler: Common problems… Gender equality and abuse are important issues that take place in all areas of our lives and which we are sensitive. Societies have not reached the expected level in this subject. It's a difficult subject. On the other hand, the common efforts of people who live in different regions of the world and who do not know each other but take on the same problems are promising.
Samara Sallam: I’m originally Palestinian born in Syria lived in Algeria and now based in Denmark, I dont know what the ‘other country’ is. I have been always ( the self and the other) at the same time. But living in Denmark and exhibiting in Istanbul is like exhibiting at home, even though I have never been to Turkey before. I just believe that my work will be understood better.
How would you like to integrate these learnings into your academic work?
Semra Güler: In another lesson called "Using Photography in Design", under the project title of "Text Writing with Photography", we work with students by handling different social events. Harassment, violence, addiction, obesity, ego are some of them. The students deal with the chosen subject photographically and try to express their ideas with only photographs without supporting it with text. I think that gender equality and abuse is an important project content that I can continue to work with my new students within the course. In addition, the participation of all students in the project, regardless of gender, will bring different perspectives. Billboard Istanbul 2020 Festival will be a guide for both me and my students in this sense.