For EU I silk-screened portraits of 27 Turkish citizens onto cotton puppets. Their faces are only sketched out in a black outline, making them easily recognizable, but at the same time, possibly anonymous.

EU is an installation that I created in 2008. A group of people which probably would not come together under normal circumstances are packed in a red suitcase and sent to the EU. This group, consisting of people from different ethnicities, intellectuals, sociologists, Islamists, and homosexuals, have resisted the status-quo, asked for freedom, and as a result, have suffered state repression and punishment. EU represents relative freedom for those opposing the status-quo. I don’t differentiate among these individuals and have them traveling in the same class. These people packed in the same suitcase are assembled due to offenses to their freedom of expression and thought rather than what they defend. The sound of this installation is an airport -or another port of exit- announcement referring to the names and acts which caused the deportation/expatriation/exile of these individuals. As we listen to the announcements, it becomes less clear who is guilty: the people whose names are announced, the listeners or those who caused the expatriation.

The inspiration for putting the puppets in the symbolically red suitcase came from the childish wish to curl up in a suitcase and being taken, easily, to a faraway place. A childish wish that cannot imagine the actual horrors of the illegal stowaway, attempting to flee to a safer, better place.