Two artists create alternative to Turkish-Armenian ‘Monument to Humanity’

PanARMENIAN.Net - Two Dutch artists’ project "Helping Hands", an alternative to Mehmet Aksoy’s sculpture that was removed in the eastern Kars, does not carry a fixed political message but accommodates space for ongoing negotiation by gathering plaster hand molds from people, Turkish Hurriyet daily reported.

Those walking around Istanbul’s Pangalti, and Taksim neighborhoods might find it surreal to see a giant hand sculpture being wheeled around on a junk cart. The sculpture, however, is not destined for the scrap yard; instead it is a mobile project by two Dutch artists touching on a current debate between art and politics.

Wouter Osterholt and Elke Uitentuis walk around Istanbul all day with their junk cart with a copy of sculptor Mehmet Aksoy’s long-debated sculpture, the “Monument to Humanity,” placed on top of it and ask people whether they could make a plaster cast mold of their hands.

Aksoy’s sculpture was built in the eastern province of Kars and dedicated to Turkish-Armenian friendship. Yet, during January’s visit to the area, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan pointed to the 35-meter-tall “Monument to Humanity,” called it “freakish” and demanded its removal. Kars’ municipal assembly promptly passed a motion to tear down the monument, saying it had been illegally erected in a protected area.

“We were in Turkey during the debates and we felt there were a lot of opposing views on the sculpture,” Uitentius recently told the Hurriyet Daily News. “We started to question the role of monuments in representing political propaganda and decided to make an alternative ‘Monument to Humanity’ that does not necessarily provide symbolic ‘goodness,’ but could also include critique, resistance and rejection.”

“When we are walking with our cart, a lot of people stop and ask us what it is and want to start a dialogue,” Uitentius said. “We interview them on what they think about the sculpture and its debate and we also ask whether we can make a copy of their hand. We make it open to decide what gesture they want to make, most people choose hand shakes, victory signs or fists.

So far, the pair has collected 105 hands; at the end of the project, Osterholt and Uitentuis said they would take them all to Kars and leave them in the place where the monument once stood.