avethomas

[avethomas]

A restaurant in Istanbul, Turkey where child mannequins are placed at tables to enforce social distancing ( Image: Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

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Street life: a fiberglass/plastic exposé

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Mannequins: A lens of society

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“We are now watching with horror that nature is in a state of disintegration”. The act of dismemberment is mirrored in the social arena, “Where the negative forces of cultures and religions are deployed in order to marginalise and categorise people. To me, it looks like everything comes to a breaking point like a chain and gets scattered.”

Multimedia artist Azade Koker’s exhibition Murder of a Mannequin at Zilberman Gallery, Istanbul, reassesses the conformist-consumerist views on female beauty.

https://www.stirworld.com/see-features-azade-koker-s-murder-of-a-mannequin-critiques-conventional-symbols-of-femininity

[avethomas]

While the purpose of ancient statues was to serve religion or to glorify rulers, modern day mannequins are made for more profane economic purposes. And this renders their apparent perfection more ambivalent: On the one hand, mannequins line the windows of noble boutiques in downtown shopping streets all over the world. Their bodies resemble human supermodels and display fine clothes of the most desired fashion brands.

On the other hand, they are mass-produced in industrial processes, made of fiberglass or even just cheap plastic. And their life span is short. All too often, mannequins are discarded for little reasons. Maybe their plastic bodies show the first signs of abrasion – and anyway, fast fashion longs for newness and replacement all the time. Discarded, worn-down mannequins with missing bodyparts look somehow sad and a bit spooky.

It is exactly this tension that renders mannequins “inherently disturbing” – they make us think about our fast forward consumer culture, and about the evanescence of our own youth, beauty and our lives.

Jonas Grauel

https://streetphotographymagazine.com/article/the-mystery-of-mannequins/

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Venus de milo

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UNDRESSED MANNEQUINS, ISTANBUL, TURKEY, APRIL 12, 2012: Shopkeeper outside his store with mannequin dolls and shop equipment waiting for customers

Knud Nielsen

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It might be a strange thing to focus on in a place with so many other amazing sites, but I was immediately drawn to how people here used the human form sometimes thoughtfully, and sometimes without care.

I found there was art and humor to how people used mannequins (either intentional or not) from the ways they were displayed, to how they were transported and discarded.

Tara Todras-Whitehill

https://yabangee.com/turkeys-mistreated-mannequins/

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On the streets of Dolopdere, Istanbul

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“Headless mannequins with pearls drew me to this shop window, but it was when I saw the street reflection that made me press the shutter.”

Elif Gulen, Istanbul

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Pilevneli Galleri, Istanbul

The juxtaposition between the graphically appealing cafe and the long back window overlooking Dolapdere makes a bold statement of how beautiful the world can look when generations and styles collide.

https://www.pursuitofart.com/blog/dolapdere-art-galleries-and-mannequins

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21.11.2022. refugess have no fault of self, yet diminished and erased, cannot find any place for themselves

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Graffiti is a way of consuming or using urban space by its inhabitants and this way is not determined by the designers of the city, which make it a way of appropriation. Graffiti is a medium for many who cannot find any place for themselves in the billboards, streets, schools; city in general. They go, find and appropriate a place for themselves.

HATİCE ÖZLEM SARIYILDIZ , GRAFFITI AND URBAN SPACE IN ISTANBUL

The images are obtained from Instagram

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Graffiti and street art represent ‘signs of passing’, fleeting presence or symbols of existence as well as (self)identification and (self)publicity within a group of practitioners who assess, critique and comment on each other’s works. These studies and the self-expressed meanings and motivations of practitioners provide evidence of graffiti and street art as subcultural forms of practice which, as Hebdige (1979) argued, use form, style and symbolism as an intentional and signifying communication and meaning system, a homology. Thus there are ideological or political values, beliefs and meanings, codes of conduct and practice, for example where it is or is not appropriate to paint or write that can be associated with graffiti and street art as a subculture. Such codes of conduct/ evidence of being in the know function as means to bind or include members, however loosely, within the group.

Representing Subcultural Identity: A photo-essay of Spanish Graffiti and Street Art Andrzej Zieleniec (Keele University)

The images are obtained from https://www.instantstreetview.com/

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14.11.2022.  Tussle of humans to belong to the land that they live on, blood weighs heavier than the union of belief

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Mural by M City at 5 Talimhane Sk.

A few metres away across the parking lot at 5 Talimhane Sk is a monochrome mural by M-City depicting a UFO lifting up police cars from the ground using a tractor beam.

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Günes Terkol, “Against the Current” (2013)