may they destroy the mountains,
may those who see it cry
graduation work Gerrit Rietveld Academie
2024
05.47 min
In the east of the Netherlands, directly in front of the house where I grew up, a Turkish choir sings. It is the meeting of two worlds that do not merge but exist side by side. In their voices I hear the longing for a lost homeland - a longing I always recognized in my mother, and one shared by many Turkish-Dutch people. You can live elsewhere, you can build a life there, but it never has the unquestioned certainty of the place you come from. In moving, some original innocence about identity and belonging is lost. The one who leaves remains, in some sense, always in transit: between here and there, between then and now, never fully anywhere.
What interests me is not resolution, but coexistence. The Dutch landscape and the Turkish song do not fully absorb one another, and yet they change what it means to share the same space. In that simultaneity I recognize the essence of my own identity. To live between two worlds is not to lack something, but to learn to carry the tension between them as a form of truth.
I wanted to make something that says: memories can last, and perhaps we can
recover the parts of ourselves we’ve lost. This piece is a monument to my childhood, to my family, and the shared longing many people carry for a place that no longer exists, except in memory.
‘may they destroy the mountains, may those who see it cry’ has been part of the exhibition in Van Gogh museum in May 2025, and has been exhibited at Odunpazari Modern Museum in Eskisehir, Turkey in January 2025.
Funded by:
Berlage fonds
Fundatie Renswoude
Bekker la Bastide
M.C de Visser fonds
Yurtdisi Türkler ve Akraba Topluluklar Baskanligi (YTB)
