Photomanipulation series. Fine-art print on canvas. 2016. Istanbul.
History is always written by someone. The question is whether you accept the version that was written for you.
In this series, I insert a single photograph of my own face into images from disparate civilizations, time periods, and geographies — emperors, generals, merchants, clergymen, painters. The face fits, every time. That is the point.
The work does two things simultaneously. It argues for the universality of human expression — that the emotional register of a face from Ottoman Istanbul and a face from Renaissance Florence share more than they divide. And it enacts a reclamation: by placing myself inside histories that were not written to include me, I refuse the version of the past that was handed to me.
My Incidental Reincarnations is a direct precursor to the My Orientalism Is Better Than Yours digital series. Read together, the two bodies of work trace a decade-long inquiry into who owns history — and what it means to take it back.
