House of Lies

On the morning of February 6, 2023, no matter where we were in the world, we, who share the same curse, woke up to a damning day. It was a morning that hammered into our heads the fact that, no matter how far we run, we carry that cursed burden with us.

In the week that followed, it was once again engraved into our minds, for the millionth time, that as humans, our worth and value amounted to nothing beyond our votes and taxes. For a week, we watched dying people cry out for help from beneath the rubble, their voices slowly fading away. We witnessed the desperation of those who screamed for aid, sometimes for their loved ones, sometimes for strangers, shouting, "I heard a voice, someone is alive." And we watched as help never arrived, leaving people to witness the deaths of their loved ones, utterly alone under tons of rubble. We saw, again and again, how those who rebelled, who spoke the truth, were silenced. For a week, we witnessed humanity’s ugliest face, fascism, at a primal level. It broadcasted live worldwide.

We saw search and rescue efforts turned into PR stunts, essential supplies being sold for profit by the state itself, aid blocked just to preserve the schizophrenic sultan's reputation. Looting, abductions, and a failed state refusing to intervene, all so the schizophrenic sultan's image wouldn't be tarnished. Foreign rescuers—Italians, Israelis, Greeks, Americans—pleaded, "Stop, people can still be saved," while bulldozers plowed through the rubble. A state that rushed to bury the dead in mass graves and a "world leader" who conducts all these. And thus even today, two years later, people are still searching for their missing ones. Despite the double earthquake six hours apart affecting ten cities, we saw, live on TV as the whole world witnessing, it was Erdoğan, the dictator, as the murderer of each and every one of us.

When I was a child, there were pop-up books. When you opened a page, the scene of that story would pop up. You could move some of the characters a little, adding some liveliness to the story. It was genius, so beautiful, divine—I loved it. And yet, when you closed the book, that scene collapsed over the characters, trapping them until the page was opened again. When reopened, the characters could only move slightly, as if eternally confined to a sameness—a sadness hung over it.

We, too, have been trapped forever in the whims of a schizophrenic sultan. The rare moments when our page is opened are only for elections or when we are called to sponsor his whims through taxes. When those moments pass quickly, our stage collapses over us, severing us from our own story.

The pop-up house in House of Lies, despite all its wear and unease, looms over us like a sinister sword of Damocles. And we, the most insignificant part of this composition, remain trapped between the wreckage of our lives and that ominous house. The rubble is the most prominent piece of the House of Lies because fascism feeds on rubble.

This painting is not a lament; it is a ballad of disgust. If I can make even the smallest mark in history with it, that will be enough for me.