DIZ / THE THIEF, 2023

Installation, Frame I 20x15, Frame II 70x50, 1 black-white photograph: studio portrait of three married women from Diyarbakır of the Ottoman Empire, dated 1873: one Kurdish (left), one Muslim (center) and one Christian (right).

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The empty frame symbolizes Kurdistan, for the larger state has tried to steal its culture and dry up its life force. The biggest frame represents the theft state that wants to appropriate and assimilate other cultures. It intends to reframe them, but everything goes askew! And this askew is marked with the seal of Atatürk, the seal that ratified the Lausanne treaty of 1923.