PROJECT by Seçil Uğur Yavuz (unibz) and Hazal Gümüş Çiftçi, (The Ohio State University, College of Arts and Sciences)
Çeyizlab is a project tackling Çeyiz (dowry making) that is a traditional ritual of gift-giving from the family to the bride in Turkey. This tradition has meant to support the newlyweds and help them to start their next chapter in life smoothly. Besides, Çeyiz is a collective archive of decorative or functional artifacts, mostly hand-crafted textiles that also create an informal economy for women crafting from home. It embeds tangible and intangible values that pass from one generation to another in the family. The preparation of çeyiz involves not only the family members but becomes a collective activity embracing different participants in direct or indirect relation with the bride. Thus, it becomes not only a family heritage but a collective creation of a set of textile artifacts, a sort of home-based archive- museum of hand-crafted objects embedded with various stories. As happens to many traditions, çeyiz is also undergoing a transformation due to economic, social, and technological changes that are results of growing consumer society leading to unsustainable futures. Starting from exploring the threats and opportunities in this transformation, the research question has emerged: how can we turn this ongoing transformation into preferable sustainable futures?
In order to answer this question, during the pandemic period starting from July until September 2020, Secil Ugur Yavuz and Hazal Gumus Ciftci carried out online field research by conducting focus-groups with women from different age groups, auto-ethnography sessions and expert interviews. Five focus groups of 3-4 participants were conducted with modernized, urban living women from Turkey between 23 and 60 years old. The results of these focus groups gathered within a provocative artifact- a fabric manifesto that speaks up for its own faith, and reminds the current change that is happening in ceyiz tradition. It invites an alternative way of seeing this ritual in order to shed light into critical questions. As ceyiz is generally related to crafted textiles, the textile itself became a medium to host the manifesto. The written text was embroidered with a digital embroidery machine, which also represents an in-between stage that lays between being hand-made and mass produced. To disseminate and spread out the message of the manifesto, a short film was made and published.
Date: July – October, 2020