Overexposure to life is not an easy thing to handle. Most of us spend our lives creating protective buffers like family, money, plans, memories and pastimes and avoid feeling vulnerable. In this respect the situation of street children is perhaps as hard as it gets. Further, like people who have little invested in life and not much to lose, they vacillate between a kind of death wish, attested to by taking paint thinner, on the one hand, and a sharpened desire to live, demonstrated by playfulness and vivid dreams and plans.

French artist Lorentino (Laurent Vall) opened an exhibition called "Sokak Maşallah: Streets Searching for Their Identity" at the Dulcinea Art Gallery, which is intended as a kind of secular blessing for street children. Lorentino came to Istanbul for the first time last summer and developed an interest in this city. When he was invited to start a project here by L'Espace d'Art Contemporain of Dulcinea, he decided that he would do something different from his previous work which focused on military camouflage, questions of male identity and the idea of "man in space." Lorentino was allocated a studio in Beyoğlu, and as he was strolling in the neighbourhood, the street children captured his attention, providing the inspiration for "Sokak Maşallah."

Lorentino was aided in his project by Yusuf Mehmet Kulca, president of the Association of Street Children and a former street child and Claire Bucci, manager of the Dulcinea Art Gallery. Kulca's experience working with these children enabled him to provide useful information about their psychological and social situation, while Claire gave intellectual and material support for the project. One day in Beyoğlu, Lorentino saw a child selling Selpak paper napkins passed by another one wearing a ceremonial dress carrying a dark-red satin belt with a gilded writing of "maşallah" and this was like a flash of light telling him what exactly the former missed: protection. "Saying maşallah to poor children was to grant them protection and give them a fictional identity," Lorentino says, in this way, the concept of "maşallah," a wish of well-being and prosperity in Turkish and Arabic, became the second theme informing his project.

The artist says that the poverty and deprivation of street children is a known fact and that he didn't mean to publicize their situation, make a political statement or denounce a system through his work. He was struck by certain images and wanted to give them artistic expression. On the other hand, he acknowledges that the children are produced by economic and social crises and that the Kurdish problem is part of the story. "A lot of these children are either Kurdish or come from underdeveloped areas," he says. He adds, "People don't want to recognize the children and marginalize them," and cites Kulca saying that for the past 20 years, these children have been maltreated and accused of murder and theft by the authorities and that they are being understood only recently.

Having said this much about the children's background, Lorentino emphasizes that his aim was to simply give an impression of these children, who, while they may be drugged and poor, also laughed jovially and were, in the final analysis, children who wanted to play and have fun. As it also happens, they were not always coherent about their views and only partially articulate, attested by their fragmentary "concept" of maşallah which they described in the video film and their inclination to use mimics or sign language instead of words.


Electricity as the symbol of life

The project of street children parallels a former interest of Lorentino's, which was the depiction of light and brightness that would spread to Turkey through the electricity produced through the Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP) in a coincidental way. As he arranged the gallery space of Dulcinea for the present installation, light turned out to be a central part of the design. He had stream lights, for instance; then there was a video presentation of children talking about maşallah, and the letters "m-a-ş-a-l-l-a-h" cut out from paper were strung along the gallery space and delineated through colored light bulbs.

Lorentino's depiction of children is multidimensional because it ranges not only from their obvious poverty and distinctly childlike behaviour but also their fantasies and self-perception "These children wanted to play, to communicate and to become an adult," he stated. He used child who stands in military salute (shown in this article) as an example of the central role of the military in integrating the children into society. He suggested that while society might have excluded these children and marginalized them, the military offers them a way back. "In Turkey, these children don't have the same trajectory as 'normal' children," he said. "The military is a way for them to be counted in society for the first time, and they benefit from it to develop skills and build connections."

Lorentino observes that in Turkey military service and marriage are necessary rites of initiation into society. Asked if the situation is different in France, he points out that it is likely that country will have a professional army by year 2002. The issue is controversial, he noted, with even left-wing and pacifist inviduals, among whom is French Culture Minister Jack Lang, opposing the optional character of the military on grounds that it runs counter to the idea of republicanism. (Nonetheless, it would seem that the very existence of this debate points to a fundamental difference between French and Turkish systems in that the French public can discuss the identity and function of the military, a freedom which has yet to be earned in Turkey.)

The children perceive the street not as an area for exploration, as it appears to be bohemian artists for instance, but as their real home. They establish "a society within society," build solidarity and survive this way, while many refuse to go to associations and get assistance because "the distance they have to cover to catch up with time is so great that they cannot do it anymore."


A separate world

Different techniques were used in this exhibition, such as installations, video film and painting, as well as unusual materials like paint thinner, motor oil, mud, water and sea water and the blue beads believed to ward off evil omens. The quality and variety of materials suggest, I believe, the scope and depth with which Lorentino wished to penetrate these children's world.

The material for the street children paintings, which are on the page, were, for instance, motor oil and thinner. In one of them, Lorentino tried to remember the expression on the face of a child who was drugged on thinner and had bags under his eyes. The boy seemed to be in a fantastic universe and in another dimension. The left and right hand sides of the painting are studded with stars in a reference to the "süper star" nova, which is known for its great speed and short life span and which resembles, in a way, the street children. The second boy is clad in wooden coat, which Lorentino interpreted as a kind of cover, and which, he pointed out, "served to put the boy on the scene and to make him glamorous." There are decorative elements in this painting which are intended to "give the boy an aura." "I feel that this was the impression that he wanted to project," Lorentino said, to underline the importance of depicting the children as they truly are.

As it happens, truth often appears through foils. Thus, on the one hand the children wanted to play and joke with artist, while on the other they "used" him to pose as an adult, and perhaps to impress the spectators. It is hard to tell whether the mischief and gaiety or the adult demeanour is more "real," perhaps because, as Lorentino notes, the children deliberately play a "double game" in which each role calls for its opposite in the struggle for survival. Lorentino depicts a similar ambivalence in the posture of police officers who, while they reprimand the children and tell them to get off the street, simultaneously act as "accomplices" by providing adult guidance.


Camouflage - military and civilian

At an earlier time, Lorentino's interest in male identity led him to reflections about the military and the institution of camouflage. He said this method originated during World War I in 1915-1916, when military commanders asked cubist artists to come up with methods of disguise for the war. In Picasso's paintings, he noted, you see an object from a multitude of perspectives, which creates the feeling that "you don't know where you are and there may be something hidden [in the painting]." Lorentino's earlier work in military camouflage consisted of representations of the soldiers' uniforms. He isolated and enlarged the green stains on the cloth in the form of sculpture, creating a kind of territory on which spectators would simultaneously walk purposefully and get lost. His work highlighted the double function of camouflage as protection and deception.

Lorentino finds a parallel in his work on street children, since maşallah serves a kind of camouflage. "It is used to protect what you have, such as a car, a house or child, and at the same time to delineate a frontier with the rest of the society. In a way, there is something egotistical about it." From this perspective, Sokak Maşallah as a gesture of protection is not free from the counter-motive of jealousy.

The artist's previous displays consist of a painting exhibit at Grenoble University in Grenoble (1989); at Aix en Provence University in the city (1992); the "Animals" exhibit at the le Duplex in Paris (1993); the "Come Back/Screw Off!" installation at the artist's home in Paris (1995); participation in the "And the manuscript, spectacular!" exhibit at the Manet Art Center in Genevillier (1997); participation in the "Stark blue, stark green" exhibition at Fontenay sous Bois (May 1998); a painting exhibit at the Bagnoles Contemporary Art Center in Normandy (May 1998); a photographic installation at the Fontenay market in Fontenay (May 1998); and an exhibit at the Salon de l'ephemere at Fortenay (August 1998.

The exhibit can be seen until Aug. 8 at Dulcinea Art Gallery on Meşelik Sok. 20, Beyoğlu.

Natali Medina,
Turkish Daily News, July 1999