custom designed kimona
linen, digital prints on cloth, sewing
2021
In early 2021, as the artist spoke with Dilek Aydın about her life and work, they walked through Istanbul neighborhoods stopping in her favorite shops. Materials the artist randomly collected during these strolls combined with memories inspired a series of new works including two wearable kimonos. When she was about five years old and a cousin whose father was in the military brought her a kimona from Japan, for the first time Atakan realized the world was bigger than the small town in which she lived. This custom-tailored kimona was made from two pieces of cloth: the front, a lip design representing the telling of her story and the back, a black and white print of a small house in the forest with inserted female figures evokes a childhood memory. The images of women taken from a 1952 Sears and Roebuck Catalogue are reminiscent of the paper dolls the artist made and played with as a child