May 16 , Romani Resistance Day, is an important commemoration of the resistance and also the suffering of Romani people during the period of the Porajmos, Nazi regime’s rule in Europe. Regretfully, the significance or even the existence of this day and the events it recalls and commemorates are not widely known or recognized. Regretfully, the significance or even the existence of this day and the events it recalls and commemorates are not widely known or recognized. The “Particular” exhibition of Aytac Kayacik is inspired by the Romani Resistance and his subjects are portrayed as organic creatures, resisting being placed in categories or conforming to stereotypes or expectations.
“When we think that Porajmos camps were created for opressing dissenting thoughts, May 16 shows us how this is impossible.
From my perspective, of course we can not understand the concentration camp situation exactly. But, we can get an insight from this experience and we can understand it by looking at our own lives and our resistance: we are organic creatures and actually we have a lot of possibilities in our body and in our life. As we know or feel, human beings cannot exactly fit in any category or into what society expects, it is our resistance.
The system is trying to make us disregard the very stressful life with its routine which we feel that we should follow to live. So, maybe we do not know what it means to be threatened with death like Roma rebels in Nazi camps, but we know what it means to be threatened with "good life" or basically "life".
In both experiences, the system wants to rule us using fear and it wants to place us in its categories and its routines. This fear and routine are trying to make us less sensisitve, less critical and I think, they engender a lot of discriminative approaches which we do not pay attention to.
We should feel that we are not robots, we are organic creatures and we have a lot of suprises and possibilities which the system does not take into account. We just need to remember, and this exhibition aims to remind us by looking at our bodies and daily, "particular" emotions about our possibilities.
At the same time I wanted to draw some connotations such as "amazon warrior" or "portrait of ceija stojka" which I relate with "resistance" and which I am affected by because of their life story which is full of resistance. “