Biber Bahçesi / Pepper Garden, Access Gallery, Vancouver, CA, curated by Katie Belcher

Biber Bahçesi / Pepper Garden brings together a large body of textile works that speak to the post-Gezi period of the last ten years in Turkey. By weaving, knotting, twisting, packing, unraveling, and dissolving various fibres, Tamer exercises a deep care for craft and its physical possibilities in a material-bound yet symbol-laden world. While grieving the collective collapse of narrative capacities under the rise of securitarian regimes, the works invite a playful curiosity towards the possibilities brought upon by becoming undone. Tamer asks, “When fragments are scattered, what could a feminine reorganization of relating to one another look like? Are our previous ways of staying together still legitimate? When our sensed linearity of time is broken, what grows from the fracture point? When Law starts spinning out and Language starts thinning, where do their previous patriarchal projections on “woman” land?”

The exhibition features two monumental scale weavings made of pulped copies of the 2011 Istanbul Convention and the 2021 Turkish presidential verdict  to withdraw from it, sprayed onto woven substrates of clear monofilament thread. Elements of these documents, such as Turkish flags, Council of Europe emblems, phrases, words, and letters, can be found in the final tapestries. Turkey’s ratification of The Istanbul Convention as a binding framework to combat gender-based violence was made possible by the relentless labour of grassroots collectives in Turkey. In 2021, the country’s participation was annulled overnight with a verdict from an increasingly authoritarian government, which claimed that the convention was “against family values.” By working with motions passed and annulled, Tamer highlights the generative and destructive potentials of legal frameworks, and the manufactured ideas of womanhood and citizenship expressed through the flattening effect of law.

In smaller works in the exhibition, Tamer inserts dyed threads, printed text, hair, pigeon feathers, and various found materials into nearly flat configurations through weaving, lace, and paper-making. An abundance of dandelions collected by Tamer and her son are dried and transformed into sculptural objects. The garden is a metaphorical space where sustenance and emergence occur together. By wilfully wishing for such a space, Biber Bahçesi / Pepper Garden places faith in the personal and collective capacity for growth. 

Catalogue essay: The Garden of Undigested Experiences, Begüm Özden Firat, 2024

Curatorial essay: Drawn down, drawn closer, Katie Belcher, 2024