Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin
Alptekin’s collage Guardians of the Threshhold considers orientalist depictions of the East from the early 20th Century. The images are appropriated from old packaging and print memorabilia from Germany and the Ukraine, each portraying the figure of the storyteller or the messenger. One was taken from a found postcard printed in Germany labelled: “Serien 778. Orientalisches Volksleben. No. 4. Der Märchen-Erzähler – The story-teller – Le conteur de légendes”, and the other is from a brand of cigarettes called Zhaporozhtsky (meaning “over the threshold”) from the Ukraine, which appropriates an image of a renowned painting by Ilya Repin titled Reply of Zaphorosian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire from 1880-91. The figure of the storyteller is common in almost every culture, and is particularly powerful in nomadic cultures where stories are a significant part of everyday reality. Alptekin was interested in how images might be re-considered with the distance of time. As the artist stated about this work: “… we can read it another way, where the Cossacks could be Turks writing a letter to the European Union. We can always switch the place of origin or of the other”.