Painting

Belongs to Aslı

Photograph: Zeynep Ayta, 2023

Object no. 2343414

"These paintings are the work of two queers who were subjected to phobia in a psychiatric clinic. There was another one just like the one with the mouth fully closed. But it was confiscated by the psychiatric nurses. So what does this piece of black fabric mean?

 

It represents the mentality that tries to fit our sexual identity into the bedroom, threatens to throw us out of the clinic when it cannot fit, and resorts to many manipulative methods, especially gaslighting, when they cannot silence our laughter. But there is also a hand scraping that piece of fabric in the second picture. Who is this hand? How does it make the person open their eyes, even if timidly? That hand is the resistance of the person who wants to receive treatment just because they want to live, to make the world more bearable for themselves.

 

The hand and the eye of a queer person who says, "Only a hand like ours reaches out to us in this world" and who takes their hope for life from the phobia they haven been through..."