Özlem Özyurt
Özlem Özyurt (1980, Ankara) TED Ankara Koleji’nin ardından Galatasaray Üniversitesi İktisat Bölümünü bitirmiştir. O yıllardan itibaren farklı dergi ve internet sitelerinde editörlük yapmaya başlamıştır. Milliyet Sanat dergisinde çeviri ve derleme haberleri, Varlık, Kaçak Yayın dergisi ve www.altzine.net internet sitesinde öyküleri yayımlanmıştır. İstanbul’da yaşayan yazar, finans sektöründe çalışmaktadır. Çocuk kitapları ve öyküler yazmaya, çocuklarla yaratıcı atölyelerde bir araya gelmeye devam etmektedir.
Kitapları: Uykucular ve Kakocular Ülkesi (YKY, 2020), Türetici Çocuklar (National Geographic Kids/Beta Kids, 2020), Çevre Dedektifi (Okuryazar Yayınevi, 2019), Mucizeler Kasabası (A7 Kitap, 2019), Parasını Yöneten Çocuklar (National Geographic Kids/Beta Kids, 2018), Ekmek Arası Çikolata (İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2011), Bir Şehir Varmış Bir Şehir Yokmuş (Yitik Ülke Yayınları, 2011).
Cunda Öyküleri, 90’lar Kitabı, 80’lerde Çocuk Olmak, Bozcaada Öyküleri kitaplarından metinleri yer almıştır.
Oyuncak Yetimhanesi - Bir Geçiş Deneyimi Hikayesi
Based on the theory of “transitional objects and transitional phenomena” put forward by psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott in 1951, the aim of “The Story of a Transition Experience” is to reveal how that theory is experienced in real life.
Transition experience is rooted in childhood. In this context, mentioning the child’s delusional transition to the reality principle is unavoidable. He is not the one, in fact, who created everything as a result of his needs. There is an outside world, and it has its own requirements, challenges, and imperatives. And discovering this is both exciting and painful.
As the thinker André Breton, one of the founders of the Surrealist movement, wrote: “So strong is the belief in life, in what is most fragile in life – real life, I mean – that in the end this belief is lost. Man, that inveterate dreamer, daily more discontent with his destiny, has trouble assessing the objects he has been led to use [...] If he still retains a certain lucidity, all he can do is turn back toward his childhood which, [...] still strikes him as somehow charming. There, the absence of any known restrictions allows him the perspective of several lives lived at once [...] Children set off each day without a worry in the world. Everything is near at hand, the worst material conditions are fine.”
In a way, this transition is also due to the inadequacies of the mother that are unavoidable and appropriate to that period. There is an outside world and a vast reality beyond the mother and her breast. Now the mother is also starting to become partially insensitive to his needs. It is exactly in this period that he will constantly scan himself and his surroundings, attempt to evaluate reality and try to superficially attune himself to it.
Before returning to reality, the child will look for his mother, or rather a new object, as a substitute for his omnipotent control over his mother. This would be the transitional object. The “transitional space”, which Winnicott defines as the link between the inner and outer world or between the psychic and material reality, emerges through the various inanimate objects that children hold to comfort themselves in the absence of their mothers. These are mostly toys or soft materials that have strong connections with play and fetishism. For a while the child will continue to keep this object under his control, carry it with him, and would want to assume all rights over this object. There is a tacit agreement between children and adults regarding this matter. The child’s unreserved domination over the transitional object is recognized by the adults.
In this way, Winnicott constructs his discourse through the ‘thing’, often in the form of a toy or an absolute object discovered in the early stages of life, and its contribution to the organization of the self.
In order for the child to move from the primary period, in which he is dependent, especially on the mother, to the next period dominated by omnipotence, he must be constantly in contact with the central environment established as the “intermediate area”, and initially enfold and then destroy the object he possesses. The object that is killed and that has lost its meaning will gain the legitimacy of its own power by managing to survive in some way, or at least by being able to impose itself as a “thing”.
On the other hand, as a soother of anxiety, a tool for navigating the relationships with the outside world, and an object instilled with significance beyond its basic functionality, the transitional object seems to foreshadow many of the roles assigned to objects by people throughout their lives. This experience, focused on the enticing, disturbing, obsessive, destructive and excessive, encourages us to reconsider the social, cultural and economic significance attributed to objects.
The photographs, videos, sculptures and installations of 7 different artists in the exhibition were explored within this context, in an attempt to establish a holistic narrative through the different approaches and responses to the aforementioned separation that takes place in childhood. As Nazan Azeri’s babies, forgotten in their rooms, squeezed in small spaces, probe into the childhood memories, the subconscious and the sense of belonging of the audience, these are somewhat complemented by Gérard Quenum’s defensive attitude towards battered, forgotten toys.
The pensive stance accompanying the transition from childhood to adulthood observed in the stereotypical movements in Server Demirtaş’s video “Little Girl”, coincides with Winnicott’s notion of the “intermediate area” of experience, in which the object is later remembered as an entity outside of oneself.
While Işıl Tüfekçi Ardıç and Mish Aminoff deliberately recall their past memories through their photo collages; this story is complemented with Nazan Azeri’s transformed babies and buried in an obscure place with the photographs of a performance, titled “YERLEŞ-EME-MEK” (NOT-ABLE TO-SETTLE DOWN). Transitional objects find a shelter in Tuğçe Makarnacı’s work, “Yard - The Toy Orphanage”. No one will be able to lay a hand on them anymore in this toy orphanage, and they will be able to continue to exist as they are, in their torn, damaged and dirty state.