Constituting an Island

In her artistic production spanning different media, İz Öztat deals with the effects and operations of memory, myth, and official narratives. She discusses how these fields define reality and fiction and establish hierarchies between them, and in so doing exercise power historically and socially. Öztat produces most of her works through long-term research, following a form, a concept, a story, or a current political agenda in order to keenly examine concepts of spiritual or physical contact, encounter, and distance in her work, both in terms of forms and the materials she uses. Since 2010, she has been working in a collaboration antithetical to time, with Zişan (1894-1970) who appears to her as a historical figure, a channelled spirit and an alter-ego. In their collaborative work, they recognize the return of the suppressed past, negotiating official narratives through the alternative possibilities offered by fiction.
Having come across Zişan’s utopian short story “Cezire-i Cennet/Cinnet” (Island of Paradise/Possessed, 1915-1917), Öztat searches for Ada Kaleh, which inspired this text. Ada Kaleh, the last Ottoman territory in the Balkans in 1915, was submerged with the construction of the Iron Gates hydroelectric plant in 1968. This video installation, “Constituting an Island”, is part of a larger body of work, and it marks the absence of the island through the collective movement of canoes.

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