“Mama Deniz”

5 channel video installation / Warsaw, 2010

Mama Deniz, is the oldest surviving transsexual in Istanbul to have undergone sex change operations. Mama Deniz, who continues to be active as a sex worker today, ran away from home when still a child, leaving the provinces to come to Istanbul, and is the sole protagonist of this video installation shot by Tayfun Serttaş. The video installation consists of five different narratives, namely “migration, transformation, nights, the 1980 military coup and today”. During these five chapters, the different layers of Mama Deniz’s life, starting with the life of the young Adana-born Kemal and extending to the present, is comparatively examined.

Apart from the fact that Mama Deniz, who is in her late 70s, takes us on a trip through the archaeology of sexuality as an important surviving witness, the artist finds Mama Deniz’s extreme loss of memory to be a very crucial element within what is filmed. This situation adds a psychoanalytic aspect to the video and serves to show how impossible it truly is to reach that subjective area called “memory.” And this loss of memory can be visible in the same way within the context of Istanbul’s history. In a way, minor heroes, like Mama Deniz, hidden in the city and in its social layers, give birth to each other from the inside. There is a kind of contract between them and Istanbul. In this respect, it is not possible for the protagonist to find any alternative life outside Istanbul. It is the background of this great contract that the artist also strives to reach.