DOUBLE PORTRAIT

Cemre Yeşil’s new work Double Portrait is a reverie in the form of images and words. A communication of her artistic calling through photography and an archive of her personal journey of fear of loss; the joy of love and birth; and a questioning of the psychological aspect of photography. The work invites the viewer to remember what it means to be held, and experiencing what it means to hold regardless of cultural norms related to gender. Double Portrait records 9 years of research into a real-time system of observation on the mother-child relationship through different lenses. Ahu Antmen remarks about the work: “Double Portrait is full of the visual variants that raise questions related to our selves and identities through our own personal archives. Who are we? When do we become who we are? How were we held? And can photographs really tell us?

In a culture where images of the mother-child relationship are cliched conspicuously in and outside of the realms of art, popular culture and everyday life, these intimate shots in which Cemre Yeşil re-addresses the cultural, reach a more raw and natural state of expression. This work is a cartography towards the unfolding process of motherhood. A visual response to the unimaginable death of everyone’s mother.

Double Portrait speaks of something we all know about emotionally, but can’t articulate all that easily. We know it when we see it. We know it when we feel it. We know it when it is absent. We carry it when we have been held and we carry it when we have not been held.