Golden Butterflies
Ülker Street, a street in Istanbul where trans women sex workers had lived and worked since the late 1980s, was "refined" of the trans women as part of the arrangements made in the city for HABITAT II (the 2nd United Nations Conference on Human Settlements), causing them to be expelled from the street. Golden Butterflies is a trans-women monument that makes the city’s memory visible after it was erased through these incidents of what can be called urban transformation. The work was created by placing 99 golden butterflies on a wall on the street, for the 99 girls who had lived on Ülker Street in 1996.
One month after the monument was brought to life, the text had been wiped clean.
* The butterfly is a symbol used by the trans movement (even though some trans men do not identify with it because of its 'female connotations') because of its associations with transformation and vulnerability; it evokes trans individuals undergoing bodily transformation and the feeling of insecurity caused by the constant threat of transphobic violence, which can lead to the unsolved and unattended murders of trans individuals.
In the Unspeakable Home, Enchanting Companions exhibition, Leman S. Darıcıoğlu adds further layers to the work to question the placement of public art in a museum and attempts to mobilize the audience to take the work back into the streets. Visitors are offered posters of Golden Butterflies (2014) and a digital map accessible via a QR code (and the website address) placed in the exhibition area. A letter to the audience, placed next to the QR code, also brings into question the condition of coming from outside the Schengen borders.
As part of the project, a website called Golden Butterflies Public Monument was created, containing a downloadable photograph of the Golden Butterflies monument made in 2014 and an audio recording of Şevval Kılıç, who lived on Ülker Street during those years.