Elif Kamışlı, Notebooks
- Elif Kamisli’s work defterler / τετράδια / notebooks (2017-2021) is a narration written in the form of a diary.
- The text investigates the personal story of a young mother – while recording a chronicle of Turkish and worldwide political events from when the Ankara bombings took place in October 2015 until September 2016. While getting entangled in thoughts, feelings, dreams and memories, the author embraces multiple personas from the past. According to her, this archaeology of stories creates a shelter amid the turbulent atmosphere.
- Kamisli’s original text was written in Turkish and translated into English and Greek. After writing the original notebook in Turkish, she passed the translated texts to other people familiar to her, who handwrote the notebooks in two different languages. They followed the same process and ritual, their handwriting adding its rhythm and personal mark to the text’s flow.
- The production of the three notebooks took place between 2017-2020.
- The diary and its transcriptions composed initially a feminine universe that subsequently expanded to a constellation of temporalities, places and people.
- defterler / τετράδια / notebooks (2017-2021) was produced by the NEON Foundation on the occasion of the Portals exhibition organized in Athens in 2021.
