Circling around objet petit a (2013–ongoing)
The Fotonovela pieces are the results of an appropriation and recontextualization of image material mainly taken from old photo novel magazines – published between the 60s and the 80s – which I found on flea markets in Istanbul, Barcelona, Beirut and Paris. The genre of the photo novel was once a very popular tool for conveying and spreading the rules and beliefs of its time. Nowadays it is almost forgotten.
The novels always tell the same story involving stereotypical, patriarchal concepts of ‚love’, ‚passion’ and ‚power’. Furthermore, an updated reading reveals a world full of narcissists, permanently boycotting themselves and acting against each other instead of trying to get together. I exaggerated this narcissistic self-referentiality of the characters by reproducing, reassembling and painting over the original images with black permanent marker. By erasing wide parts of the depicted situations I isolated particular protagonists, and I made them ‚mute‘ by taking away their speech bubbles.
Central in each work is the egocentric theatre play of the actors, their lack of true relationship, their inner drama, the stereotypic role models and respective gestures. What once was a linear narration falls apart into scattered fragments, mimic and actions of the protagonists have lost former sense and counterparts – they open up for a reinterpretation as ‚inner storyboards‘, illustrating the contemporary concept and ideal of the ‚autonomous, flexible and free individual‘ – in the truest and loneliest sense of the word.