Newspaper Memory by Talin Gülen Schenk

Location: Büyük Valide Han

September 14th – 28th

daily – 1:00 pm – 7:00 pm

Talin Gülen Schenk collected one newspaper every day for 30 consecutive days during a time of political turmoil in Turkey and transforms them into handmade A4-sized papers using recycling techniques. Each page carries the traces of both daily media testimony and personal memory.

Over these transformed papers, she sews zigzag lines with a sewing machine, mimicking the rhythm of handwriting. These stitches remain on the surface as unreadable yet indelible traces of information. Although the textual content of the newspapers dissolves physically in the recycling process, it persists in the texture of the paper much like memories embedded in the unconscious: invisible, yet strongly felt.

This work is not only a personal act of creation but also a visual meditation on collective memory, suppressed truths, and the forgotten witnesses of recent history. Created in parallel with a period of mass arrests including mayors and students involved in protests, it employs the motif of gold as a metaphor not for mere ornamentation, but as a symbol of value, repression, and visibility. Talin Gülen Schenk’s work reinterprets the Midas Touch not merely as an economic or aesthetic metaphor, but as a call to reflect on the suppression and resurfacing of political memory.

Schenk’s work focuses on collective memory and the impact of memory spaces, exploring the hidden records within us. Memory becomes a medium of expression in her layered works, where periodic investigations of form and the use of diverse materials shape her unique artistic language.

She divides her time between Istanbul and Germany, currently working from her studio in Istanbul.