A New Design Means Taking Risks
Özlem Tuna is a designer who loves to play with dough, clay and metal... She celebrates her design journey of twenty-five years with her book WHEN I LOOK BACK . The book, which she started writing at the beginning of the pandemic, was published in September 2021. In February, it was the source of an exhibition with the same name at Kale Design and Art Center.
When I Look Back ; It involves the reader in the breaking points of a designer's life, the difficult decision thresholds in the design processes of issues such as sustainability, carbon footprint, production-consumption balance. Throughout our lives, we leave footprints behind with what we do, read, and produce. Özlem Tuna is someone who keeps track of almost everything related to her own footprints. Designers have dozens of ideas and experiments that never went into production, as well as ideas that came to life, that remained among notebooks, sketches, and computer files. The book also contains the courage of a designer who transparently leaves himself open to the reader and the design world.
When I Look Back offers interesting experiences to the reader between the pages of the book. A small dried piece of a mixture of vegetable waste in the workshop, onion, lemon and orange peels added to paper pulp is inside the book you bought; you can touch and smell it. Again, a tiny porcelain piece produced for the book, shaped by hand and with colored glaze applied, a small piece of pressed brass waste from metal lathe production in the workshops in the Grand Bazaar and its surroundings has taken its place between the pages of the book.
We asked Özlem Tuna how this book and exhibition project came about.
Özlem Tuna: Actually, this book was a project I had been dreaming of for a long time. I was going to do it one day, but I couldn't figure out when. Everything in the design world is developing very fast, when you design a product, you work as if you are racing against time while trying to make it economical, sustainable, solve a problem or need, appeal to the consumer, and solve problems in the production stages. I had been at this pace for many years. The pandemic made me slow down a bit, like everyone else. At that time, I thought it was time for this book.
- Seeing what I have done and what I have not done,
- Recognizing my successes and failures,
- I can say that it emerged when I began to muster up the courage to try to understand the transformation I was going through with my designs and products while the world was changing with what we did, and to calmly put these into writing.
The second character of the book is Istanbul. What would you say if we said that you are literally thanking Istanbul?
Absolutely true. I continue to work in the Historical Peninsula, now right next to another open-air museum that includes historical buildings such as the Kılıç Ali Pasha Mosque, one of Mimar Sinan's most elegant buildings, Tophane-i Amire, the Italian High School, and the Venetian Palace.
As someone who has chosen to think and produce with a design methodology as a profession, I often feel that Istanbul is a very right city to live and produce. It is still very educational for me to come across a baker making bread or bagels, a tailor making custom shirts, a carpenter or a blacksmith in the back streets of many districts in the city center, to enter these small shops and workshops, to chat with the masters. I can say that the source of inspiration for many of my designs is Istanbul and the cultures it hides.
The book includes beautiful photographs by photographers Ahmet Görsev, Erdoğan Altındiş, M.Serdar Şamlı, Serhat Özşen and Sibel Kutlusoy.
How did the book become an exhibition? Let me actually direct this question to Kale Design and Art Center Communications Manager Zeynep Özler.
Özlem Tuna: Actually, it was a bit of a surprise for me too. But before that, I would like to say something. This is a book, but just like in a design process, there were many people who touched this book, there is a collective effort behind it. I would like to thank everyone who touched it once again.
While I was still experiencing the excitement of the first book, when Kale Design and Art Center Communications Manager Zeynep Özler put forward the idea of making an exhibition based on this book, we all got excited. Zeynep Bodur from Kale Group believed in the project and the gallery at the entrance of Kale Design and Art Center, which is in the middle of small workshops and tradesmen's production in Thursday Market, became our exhibition venue.
Zeynep Özler: As Kale Design and Art Center (KTSM), we prioritize original and free projects that touch on the essence. As part of the “Take Good Care of Your World” movement that we have initiated, we believe that the world will be a better place with art and design. And by working towards this goal, we are trying to create space for artists and designers who invite responsible production and consumption.
When we approached Özlem Tuna with the idea of organizing an exhibition of her first book, she was both very excited and wondered how I could do it. But in the end, we came up with an exhibition that was groundbreaking, impressive and interactive. The exhibition 'When I Look Back', which we will experience with our five senses, tells us to touch, listen, watch, eat, drink and dream. We are expecting everyone until March 11th at Kale Design and Art Center at Thursday Market…
“touch, listen, watch, eat, drink and dream”
In a recent talk at KTSM-Kale Design and Art Center where the book and the exhibition were discussed ( https://youtu.be/Z92nwFkVL64 ), World Design Organization Board Member Sertaç Ersayın described both the book and the exhibition as an “inner journey” and commented as follows:
“Özlem Tuna is a designer and also a friend whose design journey I have been following for a very long time. Being tolerant, being collective, being creative while maintaining productivity, being sincere… These are some of the adjectives we use to describe Özlem… She has also carried these qualities into the book. I also read When I Look Back as “When I Look Inside”. I remember the days when our offices were closed, we couldn’t travel, we couldn’t even walk around the city comfortably, and we started working on this book by meeting at the docks and chatting on the drafts she had prepared during the pandemic. I think it was a study aimed at overcoming the limitations of this period.
It is the book of a process that starts with an idea, a good observation, a good analysis, and when creating the output, we take all ecological and environmental factors into consideration, and we re-establish our design language each time.
The exhibition reflects the spirit and emotion of the book very well. It reflects the experience, emotion and togetherness very well. Where can this journey take us? As you leave the exhibition, you can look back and imagine repaving the road ahead.
NOTE: This article was published in Turkish on https://www.artfulliving.com.tr .
A review that also contains the artist's own opinions on Özlem Tuna's first book When I Look Back where she discovers life and embarks upon her own journey with her designs and productions; and her exhibition with the same name that can be experienced with all five senses.