HOME SWEET HOME?
A close look at Volkan Aslan’s Home Sweet Home, 2017
ZEYNEP KAYNAR
54
"Aslan visualizes his point of view, through the usage of the strong literary metaphor, through the hybrid boathome image he creates by merging three screens together at the end of the video -as if to suggest everyone is 'on the same boat'.”
At a time when there are winds of involuntary resettlement, Istanbul Biennial asks questions concerning both old and new neighborhoods. This impulse turned out to be a social responsibility, as most people are forced to mobilize due to political activities around the world. The curators, Scandinavian artist duo Elmgreen and Dragset, address this issue through their selection of works and their arrangement in six venues in the city’s center. Among the 56 artists exhibited at the biennial, Volkan Aslan’s three-channel video installation Home Sweet Home (2017) offers the most powerful exploration of the relationship between neighbors and the social phenomenon of migration. The biennial relates the idea of “neighborhood” through individual experiences outside the realm of politics. Aslan’s work is focusing on the idea of “home” which serves the biennial’s purposes by discussing the overarching theme. Two women of similar cultural backgrounds are portrayed in their home environments, underscoring a theme that stereotypically associates women with domesticity, in order to better focus on the notion of ‘home’. Aslan introduces the basic properties describing