Banu Birecikligil

Banu Birecikligil's exhibition, Cassandra's Eyes, will be on display from 20 March to 25 April 2015 at The Empire Project's new address at Defterdar Yokuşu 35, welcoming art enthusiasts.

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Drawing on mythology, the artist interprets the issue of being a woman from a different perspective. Figures struggling to survive within a dark and hopeless atmosphere reveal anxieties about the past, present and future of being a woman in society.

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Kassandra, who gives the exhibition its name, is granted the ability to see the future by Apollo. However, unable to meet Apollo's expectations of affection, Kassandra is cursed by him. Even though Kassandra can see the future, no one will believe her anymore. No one believes Kassandra's predictions; her intuitions are no longer reliable. Faced with this situation, Cassandra is now hysterical, mad.

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Since time immemorial, women, forced to fight for fundamental rights such as freedom of expression and freedom of life, have been labelled emotional and hysterical, turned into clinical cases, pushed to the margins of society, and ignored. As individuals and as a society, we have been forced to exclude our feminine side. In our culture, built around rationality, we have lost our intuition, our ability to perceive beyond the five senses, our connection to nature, and our wisdom. We have become rigidly masculine and have accepted an unhealthy society as the norm.