By Ipek Cav, a Turkish-American whose parents immigrated from Turkey in the early 90's.
I wanted to make the focus of my response Daniela Rivera's piece, Accidental Memling Gul (or oriental rug). I spent a lot of time in front of that piece, admiring her handiwork and considering the role I play in Western culture. At first glance, before I could take in the nuances, it felt like a really simple piece. A carpet floating in the sky. I hard time deciphering its meaning on my own. The plaque helped me understand.
The angle that I walked into the room at the ICA was jarring as far this piece was concerning. It was directly in my path. It dominated the room and my plan to walk across it. Since I could only see it from a drastic angle, I moved in order to get a better look at the piece that had so rudely interrupted me. It was pretty to look and familiar. I have a rug like this in my home. It has been rolled up and put away due to an unfortunate flooding incident that left it moldy and smelling funny, but we kept it in the basement anyway. It almost looked the like picture as far as stature is concerned; a rug half rolled up on the ground but extending to its original position as a tapestry. I've tripped over the rug in my house a couple times, before we had it stowed away in the basement. Because there was a table and several chairs on the rug, whenever we used our “fancy” dining room the rug got all lumpy and I would trip on it. Every single time, kind of like how I almost tripped on the painting.
Regardless, my point here is that it felt familiar, I took to it right away. And then I read the plaque and understood that it wasn't meant to get in your way just to grab your attention, but the fact that it domineered the room was meant to emulate how culture affects people and their movements. The Memling Gul (I had no idea this style was called Memling Gul, by the way) carpet looks as if it has been dropped into the sky. Like a painter carrying a bucket had suddenly lost their balance and spilled the paint inside everywhere. It was meant to look like an accident, but in the sky? I didn't understand the meaning of the sky, but it was to represent Western culture. In the booklet I was given at the museum, it states that a special interest of Rivera's are the frescos and murals done in the 17th and 18th centuries. These frescos usually created the illusion that the viewer was outside. The popularity of this kind of image sustained that it be repeated several hundreds of times throughout those centuries, and ensured that there would be several styles of skies painted in around Europe. Thus, Rivera uses the sky as a representation of the sky that has been favored in paintings over the centuries in Western culture. The splashing of the Eastern Memling Gul rug on the Western sky represents the accidental intrusion of Eastern upon Western culture.
So how have I accidentally intruded upon America? I have very rarely felt like an outsider among Americans. Except, in the few years after 9/11, I confused the word tourist with terrorist. I'm serious. When my family and I went to Florida one year, I was very confused as to why we were considered terrorists. Then my dad explained. Anyway, there was one time, when my family told me not to tell anyone that I was a Muslim. That was awkward for me. It wasn't something I usually spoke about but all of a sudden it became kind of hush-hush. I don't wear a headscarf, I don't practice Islam, I'm not religious. I question God, or Allah. But the fact that I was raised by people who do believe in Islam didn't make me evil like those men on the TV. It was too bad because I told everyone anyway.
Something that had never really mattered to me or anyone I knew became supremely important; the religion my parents choose to practice. The effect of such hasn't really faded. I don't feel like I'm intruding upon America by any means, but I definitely feel like a different part of America. The Muslim-Americans. The Turkish-Americans. Whatever. All of a sudden Islam became very important to America. I don't know how important it was before because I was too young to understand much of anything, but I do remember that one day when Islam exploded. It was in the news. It wasn't overseas, it was right here. It was terrorism. I was terrorism.
In an instant I became the splashed, jarring paint on the clear, blue canvas. I became the smeared bodies on the pavement, that chose to leap instead of burn. I caused the crushed helmets and frayed business suits, the broken heels, the smoke-filled lungs. It's been my role in Western culture ever since. I am terrorism; I am in the spotlight.
