| Sometimes all it takes to make an already professional art world event even more serious is a big pink tent adorned with amateur art and condoms. The concept behind Gulay Alpay’s not so silk, Silk Room construction of wood, pink paint, condoms and plenty of brushes and paint palettes for the general public to take up for themselves was less so high art than high purpose. |  |
Sometimes all it takes to make an already professional art world event even more serious is a big pink tent adorned with amateur art and condoms. The concept behind Gulay Alpay’s not so silk, Silk Room construction of wood, pink paint, condoms and plenty of brushes and paint palettes for the general public to take up for themselves was less so high art than high purpose. Alpay created this interactive structure with the goal of making a statement about the female and her body.
Here, the artist invited visitors of all ages to express themselves on walls painted in the stereotypically feminine color of pink and splattered with rainbow-colored condoms in an attempt to incite a call to arms against unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases in cultures and societies whose economies are at that of the Western world’s poverty level and below. The interactive installation thus provided a theme for the potential creativity at hand and got the visitors to this Turkish contemporary art fair thinking about birth and disease control in a way that was, literally, productive.
Although, by the end of the fair, the majority of the structure’s extensive coverings played off of Alpay’s original abstract swirls, blotches and complex lines of strong paint colors which are so characteristic of the artist’s larger oeuvre, the participants added much in the way of statements and expressions in their native tongues as well as in each of their individual brush strokes, but they also contributed by way of the very footprints left behind on the floor of Alpay’s structure. These were hundreds of artists/art participants with a purpose, and both their brush strokes and their presence left visible traces on the surface of Alpay’s installation. Thanks to Alpay, these remnants now serve as testament to the fight for sex education.
