Interview with Yasemin Şenel: Hello, Baby
Yasmin Ahmed
When I met Yasemin Şenel at the Galerie G-Art, where her work is on display and on sale until 12 April, 2014, she stood in the middle of the white-bright L-shaped gallery, a small woman with a fringed bob. The walls burst with juxtaposing colours, Lemon yellow and grey, sprinklings of tongue-pink. Yet all have a darkness to them. And so the stories flow:
How long did it take you to make all of these?
There are three series here.
In 2011, the first drawing that came out was this, “Hello Baby.” I went to the baby’s house, the baby didn’t come to me, okay?
What did the baby say?
The baby didn’t say anything. I saw that it was an interesting baby, it was in its parlour. You are a stranger put into its house. It doesn’t recognize you, but neither does it recognize its mother or father. You can imagine how exhausting that would be. You see how much it sleeps.
If we start our observation, we could see how much it laughs. That’s all it does, really. Laughs and cries. And when it cries the parents pick it up and shake it. They shake shake shake it. Why do they shake it? Its brain shakes when they do that. But in the end, the baby gets tired and goes to sleep. It’s probably nauseous. Leave the child alone! That’s where its burdens begin. Then the child sees that his mother and father love him, and he develops a softness. He hears strange voices coming out of people's mouths, he gets scared. What can the child do in this situation? It builds a mechanism for itself, to protect itself. It closes its eyes to gain some relief from the world. When given the chance, the parents would put it to sleep. They’ll stick a toy into its hand. The child will take all its distress out on this toy. When it’s very angry, it may even pluck out its eye from the socket. It sees how the doll’s eyes close when its horizontal, and open when vertical. Then the parent’s scold, “What in the world are you doing, I paid a fortune for that doll, aaah you took out its eye,” etc. Leave the child alone! Give the child a chance to grow. Its learning from deconstructing the doll. But who lets them do that? No one.
I wanted to observe this from a closer perspective. I go inside the baby’s doll, I became the doll. The doll doesn't have a tongue, it can’t speak. Are you doing the baby a favour, are you protecting it? It learns by itself now that it will be punished for speaking. Amongst these relationships [between parents, doll, ect.] the baby becomes a child. I lived these things through the baby.
For example, hands and wings are the same to me. Anyway, we all [all the creatures] had the same organs, the birds developed wings and in us it turned into hands. But you’ll see, a baby’s hand is always like this:
(she reaches out her hand)
And when it senses love, it stretches its arms like this, like wings. And when it’s scared, it makes its hands smaller:
(she clenches her fist).
And that’s what I wanted to capture. For example, it really comes out in this painting here (takes me to the other side of the room),
It’s eyes are so strange, as is the way its looking at things. Even the ex
It’s as if its face is in a cage.
Hah! Exactly! It’s face is like that, and its arms too are helpless in a way.
(Me pointing across the room). So it’s born there, and here it has become a child.
Yes. And there is continuous hope, this soul everywhere. Let’s look at this one here,
There’s darkness outside, and there are hands with white gloves. There is definitely something that gives the child strength, so it can do things on its own. This is a guardian angel. None of us could ever say anything, could ever say no to our family members. They never teach you such a thing anyway. I never went through those things much, as I left home when I was 16.
By yourself?
Of course by myself. How else would it be?
No, it’s not a small deal. Even today, we have women my age who still live with their parents. You were independent when you were 16.
I was, but maybe I’m calculating those days with these paintings. Because you’re in an unfamiliar place. The culture is different, the people are different. That means that everyone is an angel, and there is an angel that protected and lead me to only good people. You understand? Sometimes you’re broke, sometimes you’re sick. In times like this, there was always someone there for me. I moved, I moved into a hostel, I met someone at the cafeteria, I washed dishes at the cafeteria, I paid for the room that way. When life is going like this, of course you would say “byebye” to your parents. Because you see that you’re handling it all on your own. So in that way, I never took financial help from my parents, not even for school. If you pack up and leave, you might as well manage it. And that’s what I’ve been doing for 40 years.
And now you’re here.
Yes. The gallery found my work on the internet. This is from a German collection made in January. The Masked Babies. I told them that it’s best to complete the three series and show them all in one go. So here are the three: “Hello Baby,” “Masked Dolls” and “Games.” Much from the first series has been sold, but I’m glad some has been left as well because it completes the series.
So when did they finish?
I started in 2011, (she counts on her fingers), 2012...2013, and this was done in 2014.
Some are colourful.
Yes, this is one of the child’s survival mechanisms that they’ve developed for themselves. For certain their worlds are (need to be) colourful, which helps them be patient until a certain age, and aids them to grow. You daydream about what they will do when they’re grown up. And it’s good that way, to live via dreams. It can be a number of things, “I’m going to study in this particular faculty,” or “ I will go out with this person”. It's a good thing we have dreams. And I want everyone to chase their dreams. And as soon as you feel as if your dreams are being taken away from you, you need to fight. You only live once here. Are you going to be born again? I mean, born into this life? Universalism is one thing, but if you truly love what you're doing, you have to love it to its very depth. There is no other way.