I’m Changing, Have You Noticed?

As life flows on through endless chains of change of every kind, some of us manage to adjust to these winds of change in a healthy way and adapt our personal development to them. Others stall within rigid patterns of perception and, blocked, carry on living in a more or less static way.

The first group were very probably not deprived of opportunities to express themselves freely and creatively while they were growing up. Even if, say, the lines in their drawings came out crooked, they had people close to them who followed and supported their efforts with love, respect, interest and understanding… By freely exploring the things that interested them – and sometimes by making mistake after mistake and trying again – they were able to discover and get to know their own abilities and limits. In the end, they grew up to be self-confident people with strength of character. The others, by contrast, had no chance to research, explore, develop and experiment, because there was no one around them with whom to share such curiosity. Sometimes they would buy him ready-made toys and tell him to “be good and behave”. Then he went to a nursery, and one day in the classroom his mother said: “Look, son, how nicely Ahmet has done his work! Why can’t you do it?” – and after that, was there any enthusiasm left in our little one!…

He becomes an adult who still complains, full of feelings of inadequacy, “I have no talent anyway, I can’t even draw a straight line!”, and joins the “army” of other adults (who complain just like him). This means that the thoughtless, humiliating criticism he received as a child whenever he made something a little lopsided left marks buried deep in his personality, because his heart had been wounded beyond repair…

Besides these examples from the human landscape, there is also a category of parents who push their child forward with grand claims: “My child is very talented. He draws wonderful cartoons!”, for instance… Once this has been announced, the child is expected to watch his step and live up to the image presented of him. Otherwise, won’t his mother and father be disappointed?

In fact these are just some of the stories we come across all too often. The first, lucky person is rarer than the others, because he is a whole individual. The second one’s situation is a little different: of course he gets by in life, but one would have wished he could be a stronger, happier, more self-confident and enterprising person… The last one has a hard time too, because he must always be able to meet other people’s expectations of him!…

As we have tried to suggest above, although one of the benefits that truly high-quality “art education” can offer is a contribution to the development of a strong personality, it can be said that the place and importance of this subject – whose scope is limited even by its name, “painting class” – alongside other technical disciplines is not sufficiently understood.

What is more, we adults sometimes, for some reason, impose on our children and young people our own value judgements, which can be loaded with all kinds of stereotypes about norms of beauty, set them before them and expect them to copy the templates we have chosen. Those who manage to imitate neatly are praised, and their work may even be hung on the wall. The others conclude, “But I have no talent.” Can such restrictive methods, still applied here and there, help to instil self-confidence – the personal quality that will be needed most throughout life?

Children and young people are the ones most affected by the sometimes worrying forms that change takes in the environment, society and world they live in. Quite apart from the fact that physical change with age is a process in its own right, they may also feel the effects of changes that unfold step by step or that sometimes happen suddenly and turn their lives upside down. Among the ways in which they can express what they feel and think about what is going on in their inner worlds throughout the intense, exuberant and sometimes conflicted and painful process of growing up, the fine arts – provided they respect individuality – are the one unique path.

What might they feel when, from time to time, they reach various “crossroads”… Relating it to curiosities like these, the concept of this first Children and Youth Art Biennial initiative in Türkiye has been named “I’m Changing, Have You Noticed?”.

The participants in this Biennial, who come from different regions of our country, open their doors to us and invite us into their worlds of perception in the light of the wide-open outlook that youth gives them. If art is a kind of “magic” that can set off an individual’s psychodynamic processes, then the ‘languages’ of the lines drawn, the paint poured, the clay kneaded and the blocks carved there have become the confidants of children and young people, voicing and sharing with us their longings, anxieties and joys. And what of the effect of those reds and yellows that have wrapped around their inner selves?!… Perhaps they can take us as guests to the dreamlike squares of boundless expanses we have not set foot in since our own childhood.

The very wide range of age groups taking part in the Biennial can be seen as an interesting opportunity for visitors: the works display a great variety of age-related characteristics. In the exhibition, visitors will encounter dynamic wholes formed in the course of an “organic flow” that presents very different modes of expression, from age 4 to 18. There are spontaneous works of self-expression here. Visitors will also meet artworks that grew out of the process carried out in workshops – the results of working methods such as thinking (questioning), applying acquired knowledge, researching and designing, producing and evaluating, which, while free, can also be described as disciplined and methodical.

We are proud to present this Biennial, supported by the Ministry of National Education of the Republic of Türkiye, in which children and young people raise their “voices”.

Sonja Tanrısever, Curator, September 2010

Curators: Sonja Tanrısever, Esra Çelikkanat, Maria Sezer