Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin
These artworks were inspired by the protagonist in Jules Verne’s book Kéraban Le-Têtu (Kéraban the Inflexible) from 1883, which was one of Alptekin’s favourites. It tells the story of a tobacco merchant from Istanbul named Kéraban, who wants to take his agent visiting from Rotterdam on a trip to the Asian side of the city to have dinner. After discovering that there is a new tax for crossing the Bosphorus, Kéraban decides that they would instead travel the long boat journey all around the Black Sea to get to the other side, and avoid paying the tax. Alptekin was interested in notions of distance, and how our perceptions of space and time can be highly subjective. He was particularly observant of how technological globalisation had modified the experience of geographical distance, but also how, paradoxically, those forced to live in constant migration must deal with the difficulties of controlled national borders.