“The Returnees”
Büşra Aydagün
Single-channel digital video, 32’18”
The Returnees is part of Büşra Aydagün’s Kök Halı (Root Carpet) project, which began with her curiosity about her family’s history as migrants from Bulgaria and Romania. Having worked on this project for the past three years, Aydagün started the process by conducting interviews with her grandmother and great-grandmother. She first recorded the migration routes and lived experiences by interviewing elderly residents of Alçıtepe Village, who had directly experienced displacement. She then traveled to the Razgrad region of Bulgaria with funding from the Çanakkale Culture Foundation, following the path her family had taken during their migration. Throughout this journey, she symbolically marked the route using the human motif found in Anatolian kilim patterns, making the path visible and symbolically permanent. The documentary shares this process with the viewer in detail. During her fieldwork in Razgrad, she conducted spontaneous interviews with residents—those who had once migrated to Türkiye and later returned, and those who had never migrated at all. These conversations offer multiple perspectives on Balkan migration and open space for a layered understanding of movement and return. The title The Returnees comes from a newspaper headline Aydagün encountered from the period of mass migration. The article described people “returning” to a place they had never actually known. The documentary examines the notion of return from various perspectives.
“The Returnees” Who Opens the Wind Door Exhibition.
This placement was created as a result of the stories featured in the documentary.
“THE MUHAJIR STORY”
2023, SPRAY PAİNT ON A NATURAL DRİED ROOT
PLACED BETWEEN TWO GLASS PANELS, 120X80CM
We are looking at a work in which I compressed the roots
between two glass layers and embroidered the migration
story with rug motifs on it. Here, the story begins with
humans, and in my grandmother’s interview, we see a
waterway representing the Danube River, followed by the wolf mouth motif. The wolf mouth symbolizes the animals that migrants domesticated and carried with them to protect. Just like in my grandmother’s story, we see animals being loaded onto trucks and brought to Istanbul. We witness a moment where humans are treated like transportable beings. Afterward, they were brought to the Kirte village, where they still live. We see their rootedness represented by the tree of life motif. “Im” is a symbol each family determines for themselves. I designed the “Im” symbol, inspired by the Aydagün surname, to represent the family they built here after arriving. Then, the hand symbol is a symbol representing abundance. The seed I placed inside represents their test with the land they struggled to cultivate for years to yield crops. Their journey to reach the land that now provides all our consumption, after the difficulties of a land ravaged by war, concludes with the symbol of abundance.
“From My Grandmother’s House to My Grandmother’s House”During the documentary shoot, I used the human symbol found in Anatolian kilim motifs to mark my route from Alçıtepe Village in Turkey to Konevo Village in Bulgaria. I named this work “From My Grandmother’s House to My Grandmother’s House” and define it as a week-long performance. The documentary also tells the story of how I marked this journey.
Artist statement
I shape my artistic practice with an interdisciplinary approach to production. By combining installation, performance, video, collage, archival research, and nature-based production strategies, I create site-specific works. My work generally develops within a specific conceptual framework; I place particular emphasis on documentation and archiving processes during the production process.All my works progress in dialogue with each other, carrying thematic and formal continuity. My works, which are rooted in the international art context, strive to bridge universal issues with local contexts.
For the past two years, I have been working on the Kirte School project in the village where I live. This project began when I converted an old, unused school building in the village into my own workshop. I then transformed the space into an artist residency program by opening it up to artists from different disciplines and cultures through open calls. At Kirte School, we both live and create together with the artists. On the one hand, we conduct oral history research focusing on the local people living here, and on the other hand, we interact with everyone in the workshops. Kirte School, a space that transforms over time through art, holds many stories and transformations alongside these stories. This makes me see it as an art piece that is constantly evolving.
