Session Information
29 SES 02 B, Parallel Paper Session
Paper Session
Contribution
This study explores through creative practice the student’s aesthetic commentary to the changing role of the carpet in the making of culture in contemporary Turkish domestic space to start with. At the same time, with the help of this creative activity, non-majors question and reflect on their cultural identity via art based research in an international environment.
This creative activity provides a forum for discussion and debate of current issues in Turkey regarding the changes in society and the role of arts in education considering its historical construction and field of possibilities. This study is an example of research in higher arts education. The course entitled Art and Innovation fuse theory with art practice, while synthesizing eastern and western art history in an interdisciplinary way. Students investigate carpets from smart textiles, they consider it as public art, or a vehicle of performativity. At the end, the student works presented with their statements as well as their research process map the process from investigation to creation on the topic.
The selection of the carpet form is strategic since the aesthetic object for most houses in Turkey is not an oil on canvas painting, bronze sculpture or an engraving. For many generations Turkish homes were embellished with hand made textiles of all sorts, especially colorful carpets which raised feelings of warmth and comfort. Handmade carpets have been one of the oldest art forms, described as a magical object in fairytales, inspired many stories, children’s picturebooks, contemporary toys and product designs. Nostalgia and family stories used to succeed with the carpet in a stereotypical Turkish home. Carpets that are inherited from generation to generation become an artifact, a narrative. This project formed a collaborative research initiative about what the carpet meant today.
Hand made carpets which are found to be costly or old fashioned are now easily substituted with minimally colored machine made rugs or nothing at all. Carpets are a tourist attraction and mostly a decorative object for the privileged. It is rarely produced at home and is no more part of women’s trousseau. The change of taste is indicative of social shift and new aesthetic preferences. Is the Turkish home turning into an IKEA space, an international space, a place without an identity? What was the impact of these carpets, the hybrid aesthetic object, the playground, cultural heritage and emotional design in the Turkish home?
Students question, read, research, talk and interview about the carpet and its iconography that are elements of their culture. They support their creative art practice by searching and reading scholarly journal articles, developing bibliography as well as studying examples of contemporary artworks that utilized carpets. At the end, they write a report about their findings and explain the social, economic as well as aesthetic issues that they chose to focus on. The interdisciplinary project development supported with research, problem solving and art-making enables majors as well as non-major students to understand the carpet tradition in diverse ways and produce a creative piece via design thinking.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Araujo, Ana (2010) Repetition, Pattern, and the Domestic: Notes on the Relationship between Pattern and Home-Making, Textile, Vol. 8, Issue 2, pp. 180-201 Kusama, Y., Perret, M., Bourgeois, L. (2011) Rethinking the Carpet Paradigm: Critical Footnotes to a Theory of Flatness, Meta-textile. Identity and History of a Contemporary Art Medium. Tristan Weddigen, ed., Textile Studies 2, Emsdetten / Berlin, Gebr. Mann Verlag, 2011, pp. 131-142. Randl, C. (2010) Sensuality and Shag Carpeting: A Design Review of a Postwar Floor Covering, Senses and Society, Vol. 5. Issue 2, pp. 244-249 Savaş, Ö. (2010) The Collective Turkish Home in Vienna: Aesthetic Narratives of Migration and Belonging, Home Cultures, Vol. 7 Issue 3, pp. 313-340 Spooner, B. (2008) Afghan Wars, Oriental Carpets, and Globalization, Textile Museum of Canada, Vol. 53, No. 1 pp. 11-23. Stocrocki, M. (2001) Children’s Ethno-Aesthetic Responses to a Turkish Carpet: a Cross –Cultural Study in Three Cultures, JADE 20.3, pp. 320-331 Norman, D. Emotional Design : Why We Love (or hate) Everyday Things. Hart, K. What Josephine Saw : Twentieth Century Photographic Visions of Rural Anatolia
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