The Perfumed Garden
An in(de) terminable Oscillation Between Orient & Occident
Geographic, economic and cultural exchanges between Venice and Istanbul, deeply embedded in a historical framework, caused a firm friendship to blossom between Beral Madra and Dr. Vittorio Urbani, both curators in their respective cities whose collaboration in Nuova Icona, a work that involved the Urbanis gallery, has led to the flourishing of a new and productive program of art-exchange. The first event in this program was realized in Borusan Art Gallery, Istanbul (December 2000) with an exhibition presenting the recent works of four Venetian artist entitled Too Beautiful to be True. The next achievement was a joint exhibition of artists from Turkey Butch Morris, Murat Morova, Ahmet Öktem, Sermin Sherif, and xurban.net with installations, works on video and internet as well as those using photographs and music.This was realized at the 49th Venice Biennial owing to the generous offer of Vittorio Urbani, director of Nuova Icona Art Association's gallery. The show extended into the garden of Thetis a noble contribution by Thetiss SpA in the Arsenal, Venice. Borusan Art Gallery is hosting this exhibition with the aim to present these interesting works to Istanbul audiences and to maintain the continuity of this exchange.
The Perfumed Garden designed for the 49th Venice Biennial is an exhibition which tries to construct an environment that might facilitate a recosideration of the much discussed, difficult yet still relevant question of the various articulations of the Orient and the Occident. Taking Istanbul as its focus, The Perfumed Garden constitues an attempt to explore through the works exhibited, the line that simultaneously blends and divides the Orient from the Occident in our post-modern condition while at the same time representing and re-staging the Orient as a tribute to the Western perception of visual pleasures.
Although this may seem to cotradict the ongoing theory and practice of globalization and multiculturalism, the curators and the artists selected were motivated by a desire to re-explore the problems and ambiguities of a theoretical or functional nature, especially in the context of the so-called processes of proliferation and sterilization, or communication or the lack of this between those who speak from a position of power and those who are still excluded.
The title of the exhibition, The Perfumed Garden is borrowed from the title of a book in Arabic by Seyh Ömer Ibn-i Muhammed El Nefzavi apparently written between 1394-1433 and translated into French and English in the last quarter of the 19th century. The book which was translated into Turkish by Nevzat Erkmen in 1998 deals poetically with the sexuality of mankind asserting that sexuality is the natural and inseparable manifestation of human emotion. The translations by Western authors with plentiful footnotes full of contradictory interpretations and distortions. Reveal the attempt of one cultural exchange between Orient and Occident but also because regardless of its content the book itself has become a kind of ready-made symbol an object/subject of the encounter between the East and the West. Furthermore the content of the book with its sublime poetic texture when juxtaposed to the omnipresence of harsh and servile sexuality in contemporary art produces an uneasy feeling of anachronism.
The book contains two entwined narratives: one is the original narrative concealed within various translations and the other is the translated text with footnotes. The original is a literary text that describes sexual intercourse as a kind of sublimation. The other narrative as an intervention to the original text is the (re)presentation of the latter to the Western audience and as such it comprises an appropriation of orientalism. In other words although the two narratives perceive sexuality from contradictory positions, they are unavoidably united in a single text. The book traveled from the East to the West passing through layers and layers of translations or transformations and ended up with a different transcription. This adventure itself is worth investigating:curiously enough, throuh the process, The Perfumed Garden became a collective endeavour created at diferent periods by a number of author of different religions, communities and ideologies. Here again, it is comparable to one of today's artworks wich travelling from one exhibition to the other from one context to another becomes through the eye of the beholder transmogrified from its original conception.
The same over-load can also be observed in the production of contemporary artworks dealing with love and sexuality. In point of fact the visual metaphors sometimes ready images, sometimes fictitious are the intricate outcome of the original events as processed by the artist, seriously implicated in his/her ideological stance in his/her territorial locality and in the broader context of the art scene as well as in the calculations the artist makes regarding the presumed impact the artwork will make on the viewer. The artists always adds his own footnotes to the varied cultural material selected and transforms it into a complex totality.
Obviously one of the oldest books dealing with sexuality (after Vatsayana's Kama Sutra and Kalyana Malla's Ananga Ranga) The Perfumed Garden found its way to the very centre of Europen culture at the peak of colonialism and Victorian conservatism. In this period the book happened to provide a perfect tool for a discourse on Orientalism a discourse which represents the fantastically exotic and erotic Orient as a comprehensible intelligible phenomenon. Moreover according to Rana Kabbani the translation by Burton with his extensive notes is one of the significant examples of Orientalist myths. Thus ambiguously the book has also become a phenomenal material for post colonial criticism.
To name it an artwork/cultural production of Early Islamic culture would now sound overstated but considering the date of its creation the book may be regarded as tremendously avant-garde in comparison to the literature in Europe during and long after that period. When published and circulated in Europe it was still not accepted to being a part of the human heritage but was used to emphasize differences in order to account for the uniqueness of the West.
For us The Perfumed Garden has become a metaphor through which to explore and examine current cultural and socio-economic exchanges as generally proclaimed in the ideology and practice of globalization and particularly as pronounced in international art circles.
It is easily observable that since the beginning of the nineties, art and theory exchanges between the centers and peripheries of art have gained tremendous momentum. The most profound manifestations of this exchange are the great biennial and quasibiennial exhibitions where audiences can see and explore the works of artists from remote places and countries side-by-side with those that are famous and/or familiar. The most positive aspect of this exchange is that these great exhibitions are being presented all over the world to answer the needs and appetities of ideologically, economically and culturally different societies. These traveling artworks introduce an extremely wide range of knowledge/information in the from of political, social, cultural and psychic background material embedded in the tectonic layers of visual metaphors. If the art community that is artists and art-expert believe that art production has already become one of the most effective components of globalization then the questions that this community needs to pose ar the following: How effective are these artworks and their attendant layers of metaphor in transforming /manipulating/agitating the traditional apperception of the viewer? To what extent has the question of the relationship between orient/occident been transformed or modified during the last decade of twentieth century? If one assumes that the trajectories of the artworks of the East in the late modern/post peripheral period that find their way to these great exhibitions resemble The Perfumed Garden are they currently being perceived and interpreted without prejudice?
The exhibition was designed according to the given spaces namely Nuovo Icona Gallery and the Gardens of Thetis in the Arsenal, Venice. The main objectives were to that it be multidisciplinary and experimental respect the existing concepts and productions of the artists articulate the two exhibitions within the framework of the concept proposed by the Biennial Director Mr. Harald Szeeman and poen a vista for
re-thinking the interminable questions of orient/occident. In doing so by reconsidering questioning and rephrasing the age-old concepts of division differences and sameness between East and West. Orient and Occident the mutual articulation and embodiment on the largest scale of the myth of the "other" we hoped to contribute to the mutual cultural understanding and exchange of cultural information among the countries involved in the Venice Biennial and finally to promote contacts communication and the exchange of experiences between not only the artists and art-theorists of different cultures but with their audiences as well.
Before going to the Venice Biennial we had envisaged this garden as being one of the territories on the Plateau of Humanity. If such a plateau is a universal field where different communities can well and participate in both production and consumption a garden may be a locus on this plateau where single individuals can now the seeds of their different dreams. These thought/feelings were justified because without a doubt this biennial which assembled 65 countries hundreds of artist and thousands of visitors provided a challenging encounter an opportunity for mutual co-existence and critical exchange. Within the globalization process this biennial and similar environments create remarkable models of free thinking and productivity of communication and interaction. It was a special experience to participate in the first biennial of 21st century: specifically to participate in this exhibition. However now that we are re-exhibiting in the Borusan Art Gallery globalizaiton is being re-defined. Therefore we must underline the fact that The Perfumed Garden has not only preserved its validity but has also attained further meaning.
Beral Madra
May-November 2001
1. Bryan S.Turner, Orientalism, Postmodernism & Globalism, Routledge 1994, p.21
2. Rana Kabbani, Imperıal Fictions: Europen Myths of the Orient, London 1986
3. Turner, p.32
The Perfumed Garden designed for the 49th Venice Biennial is an exhibition which tries to construct an environment that might facilitate a recosideration of the much discussed, difficult yet still relevant question of the various articulations of the Orient and the Occident. Taking Istanbul as its focus, The Perfumed Garden constitues an attempt to explore through the works exhibited, the line that simultaneously blends and divides the Orient from the Occident in our post-modern condition while at the same time representing and re-staging the Orient as a tribute to the Western perception of visual pleasures.
Although this may seem to cotradict the ongoing theory and practice of globalization and multiculturalism, the curators and the artists selected were motivated by a desire to re-explore the problems and ambiguities of a theoretical or functional nature, especially in the context of the so-called processes of proliferation and sterilization, or communication or the lack of this between those who speak from a position of power and those who are still excluded.
The title of the exhibition, The Perfumed Garden is borrowed from the title of a book in Arabic by Seyh Ömer Ibn-i Muhammed El Nefzavi apparently written between 1394-1433 and translated into French and English in the last quarter of the 19th century. The book which was translated into Turkish by Nevzat Erkmen in 1998 deals poetically with the sexuality of mankind asserting that sexuality is the natural and inseparable manifestation of human emotion. The translations by Western authors with plentiful footnotes full of contradictory interpretations and distortions. Reveal the attempt of one cultural exchange between Orient and Occident but also because regardless of its content the book itself has become a kind of ready-made symbol an object/subject of the encounter between the East and the West. Furthermore the content of the book with its sublime poetic texture when juxtaposed to the omnipresence of harsh and servile sexuality in contemporary art produces an uneasy feeling of anachronism.
The book contains two entwined narratives: one is the original narrative concealed within various translations and the other is the translated text with footnotes. The original is a literary text that describes sexual intercourse as a kind of sublimation. The other narrative as an intervention to the original text is the (re)presentation of the latter to the Western audience and as such it comprises an appropriation of orientalism. In other words although the two narratives perceive sexuality from contradictory positions, they are unavoidably united in a single text. The book traveled from the East to the West passing through layers and layers of translations or transformations and ended up with a different transcription. This adventure itself is worth investigating:curiously enough, throuh the process, The Perfumed Garden became a collective endeavour created at diferent periods by a number of author of different religions, communities and ideologies. Here again, it is comparable to one of today's artworks wich travelling from one exhibition to the other from one context to another becomes through the eye of the beholder transmogrified from its original conception.
The same over-load can also be observed in the production of contemporary artworks dealing with love and sexuality. In point of fact the visual metaphors sometimes ready images, sometimes fictitious are the intricate outcome of the original events as processed by the artist, seriously implicated in his/her ideological stance in his/her territorial locality and in the broader context of the art scene as well as in the calculations the artist makes regarding the presumed impact the artwork will make on the viewer. The artists always adds his own footnotes to the varied cultural material selected and transforms it into a complex totality.
Obviously one of the oldest books dealing with sexuality (after Vatsayana's Kama Sutra and Kalyana Malla's Ananga Ranga) The Perfumed Garden found its way to the very centre of Europen culture at the peak of colonialism and Victorian conservatism. In this period the book happened to provide a perfect tool for a discourse on Orientalism a discourse which represents the fantastically exotic and erotic Orient as a comprehensible intelligible phenomenon. Moreover according to Rana Kabbani the translation by Burton with his extensive notes is one of the significant examples of Orientalist myths. Thus ambiguously the book has also become a phenomenal material for post colonial criticism.
To name it an artwork/cultural production of Early Islamic culture would now sound overstated but considering the date of its creation the book may be regarded as tremendously avant-garde in comparison to the literature in Europe during and long after that period. When published and circulated in Europe it was still not accepted to being a part of the human heritage but was used to emphasize differences in order to account for the uniqueness of the West.
For us The Perfumed Garden has become a metaphor through which to explore and examine current cultural and socio-economic exchanges as generally proclaimed in the ideology and practice of globalization and particularly as pronounced in international art circles.
It is easily observable that since the beginning of the nineties, art and theory exchanges between the centers and peripheries of art have gained tremendous momentum. The most profound manifestations of this exchange are the great biennial and quasibiennial exhibitions where audiences can see and explore the works of artists from remote places and countries side-by-side with those that are famous and/or familiar. The most positive aspect of this exchange is that these great exhibitions are being presented all over the world to answer the needs and appetities of ideologically, economically and culturally different societies. These traveling artworks introduce an extremely wide range of knowledge/information in the from of political, social, cultural and psychic background material embedded in the tectonic layers of visual metaphors. If the art community that is artists and art-expert believe that art production has already become one of the most effective components of globalization then the questions that this community needs to pose ar the following: How effective are these artworks and their attendant layers of metaphor in transforming /manipulating/agitating the traditional apperception of the viewer? To what extent has the question of the relationship between orient/occident been transformed or modified during the last decade of twentieth century? If one assumes that the trajectories of the artworks of the East in the late modern/post peripheral period that find their way to these great exhibitions resemble The Perfumed Garden are they currently being perceived and interpreted without prejudice?
The exhibition was designed according to the given spaces namely Nuovo Icona Gallery and the Gardens of Thetis in the Arsenal, Venice. The main objectives were to that it be multidisciplinary and experimental respect the existing concepts and productions of the artists articulate the two exhibitions within the framework of the concept proposed by the Biennial Director Mr. Harald Szeeman and poen a vista for
re-thinking the interminable questions of orient/occident. In doing so by reconsidering questioning and rephrasing the age-old concepts of division differences and sameness between East and West. Orient and Occident the mutual articulation and embodiment on the largest scale of the myth of the "other" we hoped to contribute to the mutual cultural understanding and exchange of cultural information among the countries involved in the Venice Biennial and finally to promote contacts communication and the exchange of experiences between not only the artists and art-theorists of different cultures but with their audiences as well.
Before going to the Venice Biennial we had envisaged this garden as being one of the territories on the Plateau of Humanity. If such a plateau is a universal field where different communities can well and participate in both production and consumption a garden may be a locus on this plateau where single individuals can now the seeds of their different dreams. These thought/feelings were justified because without a doubt this biennial which assembled 65 countries hundreds of artist and thousands of visitors provided a challenging encounter an opportunity for mutual co-existence and critical exchange. Within the globalization process this biennial and similar environments create remarkable models of free thinking and productivity of communication and interaction. It was a special experience to participate in the first biennial of 21st century: specifically to participate in this exhibition. However now that we are re-exhibiting in the Borusan Art Gallery globalizaiton is being re-defined. Therefore we must underline the fact that The Perfumed Garden has not only preserved its validity but has also attained further meaning.
Beral Madra
May-November 2001
1. Bryan S.Turner, Orientalism, Postmodernism & Globalism, Routledge 1994, p.21
2. Rana Kabbani, Imperıal Fictions: Europen Myths of the Orient, London 1986
3. Turner, p.32
