Tibetan Lakes (2014)

Single demonstration (lake Rakshastal on Bosphorus). 2014. Action on Bosphorus.

Photographer: David Seguin

This work relates a sort of fictional and individual protest where the artist holds a representation of a tibetan lake engraved on a metal panel. this photo makes a connexion between two waters : one being the turkish water of the river bosphorus which is in the turkish public domain but submitted to the rule of some commercial international law; the other water is the tibetan lake rakshastal which is represented and engraved on the panel.

By this staged situation, the shape of the lake which appears as a black spot, is claimed as a political land. the artist, alone in a boat, surrounded by the global megalopolis of istanbul, holds his own utopian territory in an useless demonstration: the political act leaded by the artist, exactly one year after gezi park revolts in istanbul, seems both absurd and utopian.

I can say that this self-portrait questions the role of the artist in the public domain, specially when politics in itself surpasses the artistic act, but also when micro utopia and fiction try to manage these contradictions between art and politics.