Music for Those Fruits (2024)

Suspended from the ceiling, two ceramic heads—a monkey and a woman—face each other, their forms resembling organic vessels. Their mouths are sculpted mid-song, emitting a uncanny and sorrowful duet.

The piece draws on two intertwined narratives. The Vakvak Tree, a mythical creation, portrays women as fruit-like beings, hung by their hair and used for sexual purposes before being discarded—a chilling metaphor for objectification and commodification. Paired with this fiction is the historical reality of the monkey massacres in Ottoman-era Istanbul during the 16th century. Monkeys were accused by an imam of being used to satisfy women’s desires within their homes. This accusation incited religious fervor and mass hysteria, culminating in the hanging of monkeys from trees, described as “trees bearing monkey fruit.” Both stories expose how patriarchal systems scapegoat and exploit the vulnerable, crossing species boundaries to perpetuate cycles of violence.

Together, the monkey and woman hum fragments from Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater. They mimic each other’s fragments and interchange until they become together and vocalize their own natural sounds. This cyclical dialogue of mimicry and harmony becomes an exchange of grief, defiance, and resilience.

5533, located in Unkapanı—where monkeys were historically hung—adds an eerie resonance to the work, grounding its speculative fiction in historical truth. The duet becomes a memorial for silenced beings sharing a single tree—human and non-human.