Lost Reference List

(Ongoing)

Lost Reference List is research about three Rum (Greek Orthodox minorities living in Asia Minor and the Near East) women artists from İstanbul, Turkey, who lived between the end of the Ottoman Empire and the early years of the Turkish Republic: Eleni İliadis (1895-1975), İvi Stangali (1922-1999), and Eleonora Arhelaou (1937-2021). These women were either forced into exile or left İstanbul, Turkey, for Athens, Greece. The exile became a limbo soon enough, and their stories faded into oblivion. Due to Turkey’s identity politics towards non-Muslim minorities and the patriarchal approach to the arts, the names of these women have been erased or never even written into Turkey’s art history canon. Araz tries to trace their existence in Athens.

Eleni İliadis was one of the primary non-Muslim women artists who gained success and visibility in her period. She was born in 1895 in Istanbul and won a medal for one of her paintings when she was only 21 years old with her work Kitaracı (Guitar Player). She moved to Athens in 1923 after the compulsory population exchange due to the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922), where she was based until her death. Only a few of her paintings can be found, and none is her portrait.

İvi Stangali was born in the Pera district of İstanbul in 1922 when most of the Greek population had left the newly established Turkey. She was one of the founders of the artist collective “Onlar” in Istanbul (active between 1947-1955) and was an assistant to Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu, a well-known painter from Turkey. Although the intellectual community of Istanbul greatly supported her, she was forced to migrate in 1964 after the expulsion of the Rum population. She created many paintings in Istanbul, now mostly in her friends' homes. Like most of the Rums who were forced to leave, she was given a limit of 20 dollars and 20 kilos to carry, resulting in most of her studio being dismantled. She moved to Athens as a single mother with very limited resources and soon quit painting altogether in the following few years. Although İvi’s fame is growing again thanks to feminist scholars and historians, this fame has also led to the creation of fake paintings attributed to her in the art market. Many of her fake paintings can be found in auction houses.

Eleonora Arhelaou, born in the Fener district of Istanbul in 1937, grew up in Talimhane near Taksim. She completed her high school and undergraduate education in Athens. She continued her relationship with Istanbul by photographing it in the following years with the support of the Kostopoulos Foundation. In 2021, Salt Archive in Istanbul acquired an anonymous collection of 6000 photographs of mostly minority-populated neighborhoods of Istanbul shot in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Inside the archive, there was an identity card from the Greek Chamber of Fine Arts (επιμελητήριο εικαστικών τεχνών ελλάδος) without any name. Through the artist community, it was realized that the images belonged to Nora. Although I have met her through her images of İstanbul, it was known that Arhelaou is not a photographer but a painter.

The installation exists in a space between a diorama and a portrait backdrop. The word diorama derives from the Greek, meaning "through that which is seen" (di- "through" + orama "that which is seen, a sight"). Araz endeavors to perceive these women in the same city where she, as well as they, were born, raised, and based. She also interrogates the performativity of identity and its susceptibility to tokenization. The problem inherent in framing a singular image to encapsulate a traumatic narrative is explored. The installation also functions as an attempt to create a portrait backdrop where the subject is conspicuously absent. The images composing the backgrounds allude to details from the lives of Eleni, İvi, and Nora. As these women were not acknowledged by official institutions in either of their countries, Araz seeks to construct a fictional portrait for them by creating this backdrop.

The title of research, 'Lost Reference List,' is inspired by a passage in Sarah Ahmed's book 'Living A Feminist Life,' which discusses the politics of citation. "Citation is how we acknowledge our debt to those who came before; those who helped us find our way when the way was obscured because we deviated from the paths we were told to follow."