Manifesta purposely strives to keep its distance from what are often seen as the dominant centres of artistic production, instead seeking fresh and fertile terrain for the mapping of a new cultural topography.
Füruzan , TR
Untitled, 1976. Two b/w photographs 9 × 13 cm each.
In a workers' home in Oberhausen, Füruzan writes about her conversation partners: "Konuşmacılarım bizim işçilerimiz. Çoğunluğu susuyor. Kendi başına bırakılmışların, kendi bacağından asılan koyun olma değişmezliğine inanmışlığıyla dolu gibiler." Meaning: Her conversation partners are "our workers"; Most of them remain silent because they have internalised that everyone is on their own. This is precisely where Füruzan's view of the so-called "guest workers" is revealed: not as stereotyped marginal figures, but as people whose everyday lives are characterised by loneliness, structural dependence and social vulnerability. Even then, her project was understood as an attempt to meet the realities of life of migrant workers in Germany with accuracy, empathy and literary acuity — and to give them visibility where they were all too often overlooked.