Eine Künstlerin ohne Visum ist keine Künstlerin, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, 2023
I have been invited to participate in Artist in Residence at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart. There have been ongoing visa issues between Germany and Turkey, and I have been caught in the midst of this political conflict. Despite applying for a long-stay visa months ago, Germany has not issued it yet. Consequently, I decided to travel to Stuttgart with my Schengen visa, hoping my long-stay visa would be processed while I was there. Given the circumstances following the recent general elections, I had a strong desire to avoid spending my summer in Turkey. Feeling quite hopeless and attempting to navigate the Kafkaesque German bureaucracy alone, I eventually had to return to Istanbul, my hometown, as my Schengen visa was about to expire, unable to complete my residency. While at Künstlerhaus, I created a work that is also a statement, “An Artist Who Doesn’t Have a Visa Is No Artist,” addressing my visa situation. I shared a picture of this work daily with the German Consulate to draw their attention to the situation.
Another work, “An Artist Who Cannot Speak English Is No Artist,” by Mladen Stilinović, greatly impacted this work.
