A WAR of works has broken out between the Turkish Cypriot artistic community and the Mayor of north Nicosia Kutlay Erk, and not for the first time.
Last year, during Nicosia’s much-heralded bicommunal Leaps of Faith event, Erk ordered the dismantling of an exhibit by artist Amber Onar because he said it gave the north of the city “a negative image”. Onar’s exhibit, a piece of conceptual art that involved draping a rather smart apartment block in laundry to make it look slummy, was one of many pieces designed to catch the viewer off guard. Erk, however, seemed not to get it.
Erk’s latest run-in with artists, however, is not over what he has taken down, but what has been put up – namely an eclectic bunch of exhibits occupying squares and traffic islands around the north of the capital.
Erk’s former foe Onar was quick to denounce the exhibits as rubbish.
“What they have put up as art does not adhere to the traditions of art, but nor do they oppose or challenge these traditions. They mean nothing,” she told the Sunday Mail earlier this week. She believes the exhibits are a lame attempt by Erk to make the city more European, something she says is pointless anyway.
“They decided that in order to become a European city they have to decorate the city with art. But I think we should give up on the idea of trying to imitate Europeanness, because it just ends up showing the fact that we have the wrong idea of what art is,” she says, adding: “It shows our provinciality.”
She also takes a personal swipe at Erk by saying, “I don’t expect him to know about art himself, but he must have people around him who do. And I’m sure he travels a lot, but I guess he just doesn’t see it [real art].”
Another Turkish Cypriot artist, Nilgun Guney, who heads the bicommunal Eastern Mediterranean Artists Association (EMAA), was the first to attack Erk and his attempt to adorn north Nicosia with anything but statues of the omnipresent father of modern Turkey Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
She told Turkish Cypriot daily Kibris this week that the exhibits had little or no artistic value because they bore “no relation to where they are, neither in terms of materials, style or content”. Like Onar she said she found the overall effect “very naive”.
Rubbishing the exhibits one by one, Guney described the “wicker baskets” near the Ledra Palace checkpoint as “completely meaningless, figuratively and literally”, and slammed the “tulips” by saying, “It’s ironic that the tulips, which, if they have any meaning must be that we should protect the environment, are made of plastic. Even the colours are not natural”.
One of the exhibits, she said, was “not sure if it’s a statue or a sculpture” and that the overall effect was “kitsch”.
Both Guney and Onar had expressed surprise that Erk and his municipality chose to work with relatively unknown artists on his brightening up exercise. Erk gave his response later this week, saying he preferred to work with “open minded people” and accused EMAA of “crossing the boundaries of politeness”.
He also invited the established artists to “look at what is being produced in our country”, perhaps inferring that all Cypriot art was rubbish.
Producer of one of the exhibits, architect Hasan Erhan, made his own inference, saying the real reason behind Guney and Onar’s attack was that they had not been asked to contribute to the project.
“EMAA never criticised my work before,” he said. He also questioned the artists’ definition of art.
“Does that mean if they had liked it they would have described it as art?” he asked, adding: “No one has a monopoly on the meaning what art is”
Erhan then gave his own definition, saying, “The first rule of art is that there are no rules”.
