Keeping Up with the Turkkans

Iren Turkkan

,

2022-23

In this project the model is a tool to facilitate conversations in which women reenact spatially reproduced gendered identities. It becomes a methodology to imagine alternative ways of existing in space, that disrupt the status quo of conventional gender norms. In Turkey, the nuclear family became the smallest social unit that can be governed by the state, around which political ideologies, cultural practices, spatial configurations and gendered identities are reproduced and controlled. The architecture of the home during the Ottoman Empire separated haremlik (women’s quarters) and selamlik (men’s quarters). In the Republican period this translated into the haremlik becoming the sitting room; where daily activities would be carried out and food was eaten off floor tables, and selamlik; becoming the closed door reception room, otherwise known as SALON. In the 70s when the Turkkan family moved to Ankara, the home of the Post-Republican era family incorporated the dining room into the salon opening it up to more daily activities. Treating the home as an extension of the modern housewife’s gendered identity, the new republic denoted women managers and victims responsible for the well mannered and hygienic conditions of the home. By making this model into a game, the project facilitates conversations that unearth current gender roles and the home becomes the container of narrative events and the motifs that characterise the space.

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