'Perched' was on view in the Aleppo Room at Pergamon Museum, January 24th through April 9th, 2018

During a residency at Berlin Glas in 2017, Felekşan Onar, a glass artist from Turkey, began to work on a series of hot-blown perched swallows, conjuring up the image of what the artist had in mind, after reading  Louis De Bernières' novel Birds Without Wings, chronicling the era of intolerance and population exchanges between Greece and Turkey in the 20th century. The story isn't unfamiliar to Onar: Growing up in the Aegean region of Turkey, in the town of Söke, the ancient Greek Anaia, renamed Soka in the Byzantine era, this was once a town inhabited by both Greeks and Turks, and the forced migrations in the 20th century meant that all Christian Greeks were to depart for the Greek mainland, and Muslims in Greece to Anatolia, leaving their homelands behind, to become refugees in foreign countries of newly established borders.

A house keeper from Onar's childhood, Nazmiye hanım, had come from Crete to Söke as a result of this population exchange, and always told beautiful stories about her homeland, in heavily accented Turkish, however fluent she was in Greek. Years later, Onar identified Nazmiye hanım with De Bernières' characters But this wouldn't be the first time that she was confronted with the realities of exile: On the steps of the gracious old buildings of the Pera district, where her studio in Istanbul is located, Onar became aware of the inescapable presence of Syrian refugees in the city, perched on the steps of buildings or by the side walks. These refugees, like birds without wings, do not know where to go next or what to do, and find themselves in a state of suspension, without a clear destination.   

Perched, unable to fly, and unable to move, the displaced persons arrived not only in Istanbul but also to Berlin and the rest of Europe, creating a humanitarian situation without precedent in the 21st century. It is then, very significant that the first stop for Onar's swallows was the Aleppo Room at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, one of the grand museums of the colonial era, whose vast holdings are contested by many countries, including both Greece and Turkey – often vying out for the same artifacts, highlighting the historical complexity of the situation. The lavish wooden panels in the Aleppo Room, dating back to the Ottoman 17th century, were acquired by Friedrich Sarre in 1912, from a Christian citizen, Isa bin Butros.

The destruction of Aleppo in recent years, including its precious cultural heritage, as a metaphor for the socio-political collapse of the larger region is very telling in the context of Felekşan Onar's 'Perched', as it enables us to see the movement of these birds as multiple, complex temporalities and questions what exactly do we mean by cultural heritage in times of conflict. But the birds stem also from deep personal introspection of the artist, in a combination of personal stories and historical narratives: Onar is inviting the audience to a with-world, where we see this unfolding tragedy together with others, and without looking away. The artist wants to continue placing these fragile birds around spaces loaded with historical meaning, to raise awareness of the facts.