Aydan Murtezaoğlu, 1961

After attending the Lycée Notre Dame de Sion, Aydan Murtezaoğlu studied economics at Istanbul University, and later earned a bachelor’s degree in painting from Marmara University’s Faculty of Fine Arts, followed by a master’s degree from the same university, which she completed in 1994.

In works ranging from conceptual installations to paintings on canvas, Murtezaoğlu shows how systems of power operate in everyday life. Highlighting segregation based on class, ideology, and gender, she renders visible the implicit symbols of power that we encounter in the public sphere. Rejecting an external gaze, the artist situates herself at a point where she can “look from the inside to the inside”.

In “Blackboard”, we see a blackboard with the hand of a dressed male mannequin mounted on it, showing the transition from the old script to the Latin alphabet. This image, engraved in the collective memory of many generations in Turkey, is based on a photograph of the Alphabet Reform predominantly found in schoolbooks. In the photograph in question, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk is seen outdoors, in front of a portable blackboard and pointing to the letters on the board. While referring to an orientation toward the “West” through the use of the Latin alphabet, “Blackboard” also reflects on the past and the future through the relationality of language, writing, history, geography, identity, culture, and art.