In 1969, Atakan moved to Istanbul from the United States to a family apartment in Nişantaşı where she continues to live.  When she moved here,  she was uprooted from my childhood domain, but today, at this point in her life, she again feels rooted.  Many of her previous works have dealt with the feeling of uprootedness and have included observations of changes in her surrounding neighborhood seen from her terrace and from daily walks. On one of her walks just before the lockdown, she took a photograph of a tree standing in the lot of a demolished building between two new buildings. She imagines that the roots of this tree run deep into the ground and allow it to continue to stand tall. In this needlework entitled Rootedness, she has placed a stitched drawing based on this photograph inside the Google Map aerial view showing the shape of a line around Nişantaşı’s periphery to combine two historical methods of depiction, the bird’s eye view used in miniature paintings with a western perspective. The land area of Nişantaşı, a hunting ground during the Ottoman Empire, now is a domestic neighborhood undergoing gentrification and is studded with stores selling international goods. Change exists, but today Atakan feels blessed to feel rooted even in the midst of change and turmoil.  

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