Fatma Leyla Ak
Fatma Leyla Ak, was born in 1995 in Ankara. After a term in philospy at Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University, accepted to the Ankara University with lateral transfer to study Art History in Faculty of Languages and History – Geography. In 2017 performed works and stuides with art historians and restorators in Kubadabad Palace located at Konya. She have graduated in 2019 with the thesis includes Saraçoğlu Evleri which built at Republic Era with the effect of second national architect movement, advised by Assoc. Prof. Dr Tolga Bozkurt.
With the enthusiasm Starting from her elementary school period , she have published stories and essays on the Journal of tales published by Can Press and improved her skils on her stories on Art History which influenced from the exhibitions she have been.
She have been in courses arranged by Prof.Dr. Zeynep Sayın at MUGSE with the other Master and PhD students at Philosopy and Art and she is still working, and improving herself for this courses. She studied Curating Contemporary Art at Open Dialogue Istanbul and Akbank Sanat.She completed her education with her graduation project named “Tell Me What You Forgot”. After completing his education, he worked as a Museum Assistant at Museum Evliyagil.
Since she is very sensitive about the memory of the human body and mind and also attaches great importance to the memory of cities, she writes for Solfasol, a local magazine of Ankara, and for the publications of Sanat Okur and Artfulliving.
Tell Me What You Forget
Every being is shaped by what is inside it, and what it is in contact with. The vessels of our souls are our bodies, and the vessels of our bodies are our cities. And over time, a person begins to transform into the city they live in like a liquid, or, as Calvino says, they oppose the city and give the city its form.
Stating a dialogue between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan in his book, Calvino gave us a perspective on the communication between the city and the people, and how we should look at the city: “Cities also believe they are the work of the mind or of chance, but neither the one nor the other suffices to hold up their walls. You take delight not in a city’s seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours. Or the question it asks you, forcing you to answer, like Thebes through the mouth of the Sphinx”[1] Yes, Cities are more than the glorious structures we see, the centuries-old structures on which myths are created, the gardens, and the wonders we want to see at the moment we step into their borders. [2] If it were, we the human beings would be among those wonders. Each of us would have glorious myths. The invisible ones also build cities, and the memory of the city is more than the architecture only waiting to be preserved. Just like the human beings… Is a human being truly capable of forgetting, or when does remembrance occur? In Oblivion, Marc Augé says that “Oblivion is the life force of memory and remembrance is its product”[3]. We the human beings live in the changing facade of the city, in its destroyed parts, in the visible carried by the invisible. We forget things as they change, but when memories occur as the product, we encounter reminiscence. Because our memories are clinging to those places and elements around which we roam.
So, what does a person do and how does they feel when they encounter the traces of these memories they cling to, and the memory that does not disappear on the changing facade of the city they live in?
What is the effect of the existence and destruction of an element in the urban memory on humans?
Even if stones are movable, relationships established between stones and men are not so easily altered.[4] If so, can a person end the relationship when they are not one of the subjects of this relationship anymore, or does the memory keep the memory fresh and continue the relationship?
“Tell Me What You Forget” focuses on the work of nine contemporary artists and a journalist, on the wishbone (I remember) game played between the humans and the destroyed elements, and on the relationship between the city, memory and humans.
INFO WALL : “Oblivion is the life force of memory and remembrance is its product”
Marc Auge
[1] Calvıno , Italo. Invisible Cities. Yapı Kredi Publications. p.88. 2017
[2] Zeytinoğlu, Emre. Kentin Labirenti ya da St. Louis’deki İyonik Sütun. Literatür Publications. p.18. 2021.
[3] Auge, Marc. Oblivion. Yapı Kredi Publications. s. 21. 2019.
[4] Halbwachs, Maurice. Collective Memory. Heretik Publications, p.145. 2021.