Date: Taste of Tea, Istanbul Biennale, Turkey 2017
Artist Statement:
Pride flags are flying in a carriage door @ the iconic Haydarpasa Train Station whilst ‘A call to Prayer’ is playing over a cup of tea in the background of a 99% Muslim state along with recording snippets from 6hrs of recorded interviews with peeps from the Turkish LBGTQI+ community. 

When I arrived in Turkey it was my intention that the work would be about the refugee status at the time. We had lined up interviews with refugees but they wouldn’t let us inside the camp to do the interviews. We tried and waited for 4 days. I had my assistant Ahmet to translate with me the whole time and now all was time sensitive. 

Ahmet said to me ‘Just like my community when they cancelled our Pride Parade forever, we don’t exist just like the refugees! They don’t care!’ and I responded and said ‘so let’s make the work about that then! That’s the interviews we need to do Ahmet! Let’s do it’ and so it was.