So happy to be part of the summer adventure with Maison Darre for ''Les vacances de Lucien,Lucien Pages is a Parisian Pr who is curating Colette this August.This summer pop up will end beginning September.

Tales of a Fairy

Galerie Nivet-Carzon Paris,March 2012

This mixed media exhibition uses photographs from my mother’s childhood as well as techniques such as embroidery to restore my  lost mother’s early life. Tragedy struck Emel’s mother Peri (meaning 'fairy' in Turkish) early in life with the loss of her sister, who was two years older. Then Peri lost something more of herself when her parents gave her her late sister's name, replacing her old name. 

 “By telling her story,” Emel says, “maybe my mother can regain her own identity.” 

Although Emel would not describe herself as a political person, she does feel identity issues are a particularly important issue in the everyday life of Turks, where the lines between individual, family, society and state are all too easily blurred by the need to belong. 

What came out of the opening night of my show was quite interesting.

I had used white metal butterflies around two of the art pieces, which were suspended from the ceiling between them. 

My mother’s father was from St Petersburg and after he left Russia during the Revolution, his family was deported to Siberia twice. 

I am telling you this because a Russian lady came to the opening and said that in Siberia there is a folkloric belief that a person’s soul is represented by butterflies. She thought I knew that meaning, and that I had chosen to interpret that in my piece.

On the contrary; it was a great surprise to me, as I had chosen butterflies instinctively.

I was amazed to find out that when someone dies in Siberia, they imagine the soul as a butterfly, and if someone is seriously ill, they open all the windows, sometimes even removing the roof of the house, so that the imaginary butterfly can fly away and give the sick person an easy passage, a smooth exit from life. 

Institut Français d'İstanbul 

Ultramémoire V-12th İstanbul Biennale/Hommage a Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Group show(Michel Castaignet / Joseph Choi / Anne-Charlotte Finel / Federico Granell/ Cyril Hatt / Hervé Ic / Emel Kurhan / Nataliya Lyakh / Franck Rezzak)

17th of September-13th of October 2011