In her exhibit at the Adahan Hotel for the 14th Istanbul Biennial Saltwater, the artist Meriç Algün Ringborg asks:
Siz hiç incir ağacının çiçek açtığını gördünüz mü?Did you ever see a fig tree blossom?
My student Selin and I enter and climb up the worn, polished grooves of the cool marble steps of the mansion-like Adahan hotel. Fresh, fruity air greets us in the warm, joyful, calm space. “You can smell a fig tree before you see it,” notes the artist. Dried fig leaves cover the wooden floor and wardrobe of a simple yet majestic bedroom. We discuss the symbolism of the fig (fertility), fig leaf (modesty), and bedroom (intimacy).
The installation includes a plaster cast of the fig leaf that covers Michelangelo’s David, a bedroom with dried fig leaves collected from local fig trees, a green couch, a mural of Masaccio’s Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden, graphite drawings of the streets that the artist explores for fig trees on four days in Istanbul, a slide show of photographs of the fig trees that she spots, fresh purple figs in a bowl, and a video montage of ants and wasps pollinating wild fig trees.
Next, we sit at the cosy green couch to read the artist’s notes of her four days searching for fig trees. She describes Turkish boys and men as brazen attention-seekers who unabashedly gaze at her, spit on her from windows, check her out “from head to toe”, speak louder as she walks through their groups, deliberately touch her with their elbows, and tell her condescending things. While scouting for fig trees, the artist hears a Turkish man say, "tövbe estağfurullah!”, which roughly means “I want nothing to do with it!” The Turkish man implies that the artist mapping fig trees is acting in an improper, immodest fashion and that her presence bothers him.
She mentions seeing Turkish men waiting for "a woman in a bright green bra", possibly representing the fig leaves and nature. “It was the third day of Eid and the streets were deserted. I entered a street that was filled with men. Men waiting in line. When I turned my head to see what they were waiting for, I saw a woman in a bright green bra. I heard a salesman telling two female tourists that it was forbidden to enter that street but he didn’t stop me. As I walked up the slope, I realized the street was once again overcrowded with men. They looked at me with an expression I have never seen before. I saw something that I was not supposed to see,” she writes about day #2. Basically, she observes Turkish Muslim men seeking out prostitute(s) during Eid at the end of Ramadan.
In contrast to the aggressive, dominant men, the artist experiences Turkish women who avert their gaze and hide behind curtains despite equal curiosity. The society perpetuates the feeling of shame for anyone who breaks the social rules of modesty and propriety. Men judge women based on their modesty. Society expects women to hide themselves and take on only secondary roles in the home. The knowledge of good and evil means that both men and women cannot live in Paradise with unconscious, open sexuality. Everyone is expected to cover up, or put a fig leaf on it.