Gamze Taşdan presents her fourth solo exhibition titled “Daughters of the Republic” at Bozlu Art Project Mongeri Building between December 20, 2022 – February 18, 2023. In her paintings, Taşdan focuses on a national image embedded in our collective memory: young girls, i.e., avatars of a conscious ideal of modernization with the proclamation of the Republic.
In this new series by Taşdan, who is known for her paintings examining the relationship between gender and popular culture, especially in the context of Turkish cinema’s classical era (Yeşilçam), the process of women gaining public visibility; the spaces of the distinction between private and public; the processes of young girls’ search for their own identities and selves between their individual aspirations and the ideology of social modernization find expression in the sensitive, colorful, cheerful yet thought-provoking mirror of the artist’s unique style.
Young girls, who occupy an important position in the process of building the new nation with an “innocent and romantic” body language that is far from femininity, constitute the main source of Taşdan’s paintings. From the Girls’ Institutes (Kız Enstitüleri) to tailoring courses, from the Village Institutes to dance halls, girls, who were educated in every field and became the main symbol of the image of a modernizing Turkey, appear from time to time through the holiday rituals in our collective memories. Taşdan highlights the stereotypical characteristics of young girls starting from the first phase of the Republican regime, her aim is not to project a nostalgic longing, but to question the meaning of nostalgia in a national context: To re-evaluate the hopes of the past through the lens of the present while looking at the realized and unrealized dreams of the Republican ideal.
In her exhibition “Daughters of the Republic”, which can be seen at Bozlu Art Project Mongeri Building between December 20 – February 18, 2023, Taşdan questions why and how the image of women has played a dominant role in the century-long history of the Republic.
