Mute-

“The secret family within us,
life,
and implicit death.”*

In her project titled “Mute-”, Öykü Önal tries to reconstruct the fragmented narratives surrounding her great-grandmother, Muteber Önal, who was institutionalized at the Bakırköy Psychiatric Hospital during the 1940s. Through this project, Önal aims to shed light on the silenced existence of her great-grandmother, whose story has been obscured and neglected within her family’s history. The exhibition serves as a platform to prompt dialogue and engagement, particularly among her relatives, encouraging them to confront the obscured past of this marginalized family member. Blurring boundaries between reality and fiction, she delves into a memory that has been withheld from her. Through her creative expression, she endeavors to mourn the loss of a voiceless figure who has been overlooked in the collective memory of her family, embarking on a journey towards healing and reconciliation by excavating the layers of intergenerational trauma.

*Nilgün Marmara, Kağıtlar, İstanbul: Everest Yayınları, 2016, s.65.