Best wishes
Mixed media collages on parchment, 20x30 cm, 2024
Engraving with intervention, 30x20 cm, 2024
Mixed media collage on parchment paper, 30x40 cm, 2024
Photo and text on parchment, light box, 2024
Sound placement - 3'01'', 2024
For many years, the inhabitants of Bergama would gather in the pine forest along the Bergama River (Selinos) during Hıdırellez (a spring festival) to have picnics. Young women would write their wishes for "good fortune" on pieces of paper and release them into the water. It was believed that if the paper floated without snagging on a stone (1) and the water erased the writing ( 2) , their wishes would come true. Many young women whose wishes were fulfilled would then bathe, cleanse, and purify themselves at the Patırna Hamam (bathhouse) located near the Tabak Bridge (Musluk Bridge) on the riverbank before their weddings.
The project “With My Best Wishes” explores the place of the Bergama River in cultural memory through the rituals of the city's inhabitants. It focuses on the Patırna Hamam (Turkish bath), of which only the foundation stones remain, through portraits of three residents of the Ne Yerde Ne Gökte (Neither on Earth Nor in Sky) neighborhood – Ayşe Üregen (1923-2023), Cavidan Çobanoğlu (1933-2023), Makbule Çelen (1934-2022), and Fikriye Ertop (1956-2025) – who grew up in the same neighborhood and have since passed away . The project also highlights the bath, known as the Bride's Bath, which serves as a place of memory where young women's wishes are fulfilled.
The Selinos River, a place of cultural memory, rituals, myths, traditions, and parchment paper for generations, whose image is printed on postcards, no longer flows as it once did. This removes it from being a place that brings city dwellers together on its banks and a means for wishes to come true. Like Bergama, a palimpsest city with a multi-layered structure where different periods and cultures intertwine, the Selinos River silently awaits new layers while bearing the traces of the past.
The parchments used in the works were produced by Nesrin Ermiş Pavlis in tanneries on the banks of the Bergama River using techniques similar to those used in antiquity.
1 Source: Legends and Customs in Bergama, 1941 - Osman Bayatlı
2 Source: Fikriye Ertop oral history interview, 2024
3. The name given by Evliya Çelebi to the neighborhood located on the slopes of the hill where the Selinos Stream was connected to the city center by ancient bridges.
4. Patırna (Bride's) Bath: Located on the west bank of the Selinos River near the Tabak Bridge within the Urban Conservation Area, built in the 17th and 18th centuries, the Patırna Bath, also known as the Bride's Bath, was demolished in the 1980s during the opening of the Kozak Road. Only the foundation stones remain of the bath, which is believed to have had a rectangular plan oriented north and south along the riverbank. Source: Inventory of Natural and Cultural Heritage, Bergama Municipality
* The parchments used in the works were produced by Nesrin Ermiş Pavlis in tanneries on the banks of the Bergama River using techniques similar to those used in ancient times.
Selinos, the property of Fikriye, Ayşe, and Makbule.
Sound placement - 3'01'', 2024
Audio recordings from @sarıdenizaltı archive 2021
