The art of Turkish collage artist Ugur Gallenkuş proves that wartime is not only about war but also about thoughts and movement against it. As attacks against Iran have begun following the Russian-Ukrainian war and Israel’s ongoing aggressions in Palestine, anti-war art creations are also gaining attention on social media. Ugur Gallenkuş’s works are a notable presence in that array.
Gallenkuş blends two—or often several—types of reality in his moving collages, contrasting pictures from many realities to highlight the many difficulties that today’s kids confront, from hunger and poverty to child trafficking and principally tackling the growing global gap between the rich and the underprivileged, fusing love and sorrow, prosperity and poverty, and agony and laughter. Ugur Gallenkuş turned to his collage works as a way to cope with the impact of the loss of Aylan Kurdi, a three-year-old Syrian boy whose body washed up on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, causing everyone to cry. The world is not just black and white; it has various layers and tints that reflect its disparities and privilege-under-privilege affairs.
Ugur Gallenkuş is notable for exposing the harsh realities of this world through the arranged lives of humans, which lie in multiple layers within a frame, and through the meanings that emerge in this way, he reveals the harshness of the world itself. That is the way Gallenkuş’s art is both contemporary and political activism at the same time.
The fact that artistic work is considered political, even though it is never a political slogan. This is where Gallenkuş’s artworks, which say ‘I would like to remind the residents of developed countries that people in underdeveloped countries live in pain, hunger, and war,’ stand apart. And it is not just that they stand apart, but beyond that, they also have political dimensions. To understand it, one must see it as the social engagement of someone who has closely observed how much global crises and social disparities inform today’s world.
Collage and Art
According to Freya Gowrley in the book Fragmentary Forms: A New History of Collage, the history of collage begins right after the invention of paper. Collage had already written its history even before modernism happened in art. Ugur Gallenkuş‘s works need to be approached and viewed against the backdrop of a history in which art was always maintained at a high profile, while collage received little attention. Freya Gowrley says that ‘collage is such a good metaphor for articulating the relationship between part and whole that one can look for instances almost anywhere.’ It is characteristic of a fragmented, magical collage as a medium. That is, as Gallenkuş does, it brings together two different worlds and creates a world above, in between, and within them. The created world represents both merged worlds, yet it serves only as a representation of a new one.
According to Freya Gowrley, Collage relates both to single-image works made from “the juxtaposition of fragments” and to montage as “an organisational system,” which can be applied to all forms of media that rely on montage in their deployment of constituent elements, such as newspapers or magazines. While fragmentary in form, it represents the two intertwined worlds and the existing world orders, contrasts, and examines collage as both an intellectual strategy and a literal embodiment of juxtaposed things. Regarding definitions, Freya Gowrley clarifies that ‘a fixed definition of collage is therefore a fruitless and unsatisfying endeavour’.
It is not only that it cannot be confined to a definition, but also the problem that the medium of collage presents, i.e., as Gowrley argues, ‘there is no one story of collage,’ should be noted, and she argues that there are multiple versions of that story for collage. Additionally, there is a statement of hers that can be considered as an introduction to Gallenkuş’s artworks, that is, ‘collage is neither medium nor genre, but a mode; a means of processing the world as it was encountered by individuals across cultures and geographies, who subsequently produced a creative response to that experience.’
Collage has a parallel history to that of art history. Because it involves and evolves across so many dimensions, it often addresses subjects that are not, or cannot be, handled through art. Because it can reach more people and convey the ‘message’ more easily, the college fulfils its mission in the contemporary world. The works of Gallenkuş can be described by William Kentridge’s use of ‘landscape in a state of siege’. When two landscapes are combined, a new landscape is formed. While it is both old and new, it is also a statement; beyond mere observation, it carries a note of critique.
(Art) Collage of Ugur Gallenkuş
We can read the description of the work Bathing at War, Bathing at Peace as follows: ‘Salem Saoody bathes his daughter Layan (L) and his niece Shaymaa (R) in the only remaining piece from their damaged house after an Israeli airstrike. 2015, Gaza.’ From the photo description, it is clear that both images depict the same house in two states (before and after the war). The distinction between before and after these images is due to the war, which creates such harshness, showing the apostle of destruction, war, and revealing the forces that let that apostle roam over the people.
Syrian children run with balloons past heavily shelled buildings in the neighbourhood of Jobar, on the eastern outskirts of Damascus. April 9, 2016, is the note about the picture titled “Balloons.” The run of a child holding balloons creates in two places two kinds of meanings and two kinds of views. In the first frame, the display is the joy of an intact landscape, and in the second frame, amidst the destruction of the shattered area, a child finds his joy.
Cutting a collage into two parts is the fashion runway walk and the escape from the war front. The models walking in the spotlight on the left represent affluence, “sparkling” life, and contemporary consumer society. People are strolling barefoot on a muddy road beneath the endless sky on the right. This is a fight for survival, not a runway walk. They are refugees or desperate immigrants looking for the next haven. Both are two different worlds. While the fashion runway walk is not a problem, combining it with the walk of those fleeing the war front, Gallenkuş is trying to convey a new perspective.
The Vermeer painting ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ is being reimagined in a war context in ‘Wounded Girl with a Pearl Earring.’ According to the description given by the artist along with Vermeer’s painting, a wounded Syrian girl receives treatment at a makeshift hospital in Kafr Batna following the Syrian government’s bombardment of the besieged Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of Damascus on February 21, 2018, showing how ‘war’ intrudes.
The distinctive feature of the worlds created by Gallenkuş is the contrast they present. In the half-frame, the theme centres on war and post-war issues; in the second frame, the worlds of ordinary life enter. In these, war-ravaged lives enter alongside various ‘ordinary’ scenes, from proposing to a lover on the lakeside to wedding engagements, blowing bubbles, scenes in the park, and even a girl in a library. In the quiet atmosphere of the library, alongside the girl looking at the book, the artist places a Pakistani child, Rimshah Ali, 12, who arranges bricks as she works at a brick factory on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan, Wednesday, January 13, 2010.
Children in two worlds live and perceive life differently. These are completely two kinds of worlds, for example, the child in the work ‘I see you’ and the connection between the bomb and the bubble in the work ‘Bubble’, and the ice cream and the bomb explosion in the painting ‘Bomb Cream’, as well as the bomb explosion placed amidst the amusements in the Luna Park, all represent two kinds of perspectives and life experiences of our time. Children from troubled areas are mainly the ones who come into the Gallenkuş frames. What they directly convey concerns the two kinds of citizens the world has created.
The two landscapes, frames, situations, and realities that Ugur Gallenkuş combines create social forms, (un)realities, and their critiques. However, the artist places the responsibility for being critical on the viewer. Since Gallenkuş’s messages are easily accessible and more acceptable, it is also worth considering whether that endorsement is critical. On social media platforms, an artist primarily displays their artworks and finds an audience. In modern times, the audience can be anywhere. Whether someone is at home, at work, or travelling, they can still be an audience. Gallenkuş’s works are being consumed (while scrolling) amid their various activities. While it may be debatable how a traditional gallery space compares to the timeline on social media pages where works are shared and displayed, the acceptance that artworks receive should be considered the same way.
Questions like ‘How does language construct meanings?’ raised by Stuart Hall are relevant here. When there are two states, two worlds, how does a meaning or critique form when they are brought together? The two worlds belong to the privileged and the underprivileged; bringing them together reminds us of the underprivileged’s relation to the privileged worlds. When an artist brings together two worlds, they create a point between them. It is a junction of meanings and an exterior of our ignorance. As Hall said, ‘meaning is what gives us a sense of our identity, of those who we are and with whom we ‘belong’,’ it speaks about where we are, what we are, and whom and how we represent.
Hall’s argument that ‘language operates through representational systems’ is relevant here, that is, ‘in language, we use signs and symbols – whether they are sounds, written words, electronically produced images, musical notes, even objects – to stand for or represent to other people our concepts, ideas and feelings.’ What is used is transformed into a sign and a representation. This perspective creates and accelerates opportunities to see and interact with Gallenkuş’s artworks.
Ugur Gallenkuş’s artworks play a crucial role in reminding social media audiences, even for a moment, about war and post-war societies, and the various conflicts children face within them. The artist opens a space that invites people from all walks of life to communicate. Through this, open dialogue takes place. We can expect these artworks to play a crucial role in shaping the world of tomorrow and its dialogues.
Feature image: Bathing (Credit: Artist insta)
Krispin Joseph PX, a poet and journalist, completed an MFA in art history and visual studies at the University of Hyderabad and an MA in sociology and cultural anthropology from the Central European University, Vienna.
