(Bear)d; 2013-ongoing
Video loop, 3 ‘30’; photograph, 30 cm x 35 cm; photograph, 45 cm x 60 cm; 71 pieces of Pencil drawing on archival A5 paper
https://www.instagram.com/bear.d.ayilar/
https://vimeo.com/81391828
(Bear) d is an installation that brings together a series of works I have produced at different times, transforming them in the context of a critique of heteronormativity.
The drawings are imaginary portraits in which I have tried to change my habit of drawing “girly” that my hand has slipped since my childhood. In this habit, lips, nose, eyes, eyelashes and eyebrows are always within the limits of a certain feminine form. My effort to cross these borders with messy lines, scribbles, beard, mustache and united eyebrows coincides with September 2013, after the forums in Gezi Park and other parks.
In fact, the 2 photos, which are a combination of 9 separate photos, were the photos I took as a souvenir while living in Antalya in 2009, because I was going to shave for the first time in a long time.
The video is linked to the “modifier” trials I have applied to “primitive forms” with 3d modeling in the office where I have been working since 2012.
In 2013, in the speech of “Love the Tree, Protect the Green, Kiss the Bear”, the Bears said that they were excluded by other LGBTI+ individuals because of their nature, and LGBTI+ individuals talked about their homophobia and transphobia within themselves in most Pride Week panels, I can say that this started the transformation of a series of the works.
With this transformation, the girly men I try to masculine in the drawings are imaginary bear portraits that do not deny their own nature; my souvenir photographs started to become digital collages in which the mental process I went through while drawing these imaginary portraits was seen with translucent layers. In parallel with my mental awareness, the video turned into a spatial animation recording my body’s encounter with itself and heteronormative body technologies.