Ballad, Video art, 7″56, 7 Channel Full HD, 1920×1080, 2009

Camera: Gülengül Altuntaş

Sound Design: Metin Bozkurt

Light Design: Adem Ayas

Make Up: Hikmet Öztürk

Set Design and Costume: Elif Öner, Serdar Yılmaz

In these seven videos complementing each other and she named ”Ballad”, Elif Öner starts out from the tradition of ashik. The artist brings together the search for the truth as a traveler, and reading poems on truth, with the art of miniature. Elif Öner presents a text as follows that explains her work to the audience: ”The art of miniature purposefully does not use perspective in order to underline the ephemerality of the world, it remains on the surface. From this point of view, due to Ashik Veysel’s affinity to Sufism, the images in this video stands as an emulation of miniature. It is the portrayal of Ashik Veysel’s life story influenced by the way miniature portrays a story. In addition, as the past is being told, the whole story is delivered on the same surface at once, so the ‘past time’ is perceived within the ‘present time.’ After all, there is no time notion into the truth and all happens within a single ‘moment’.

(By Emre Zeytinoğlu)