Page - 94 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 4/2018

94 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 4 2o18 Lora Sariaslan | The Art of Migration the different trajectories of immigration, this article will focus on artists who come from the Gastarbeiter background (Nasan Tur) or move to Europe due to parents who wanted to migrate for a better life (Anny and Sibel Öztürk), and lastly, migrating as an adult primarily for educa- tion and a better life (Servet Koçyiğit). Nasan Tur Born in Offenbach in 1974, Nasan Tur currently lives and works in Berlin. The son of Gastar- beiters, he positions himself firmly in the Berlin art world and possesses a varied practice that ranges from sculpture, drawing, video and photography to performance and installation. Keep- ing observation, analysis, and reproduction at the heart of his oeuvre, Tur works with political ideologies, subliminal messages, as well as symbols of power and dissent. “The attempts to overcome visible and invisible borders, at least symbolically or metaphor- ically, through cultural practices must therefore ultimately include a serious rethinking of how art can be meaningfully and productively linked to political activism in the context of migra- tion.”9 As Nasan Tur says, “I see myself as a political person, so I am therefore also a political artist. However, I believe my task as an artist is not to pursue politics, but rather to seriously and critically address political themes that considerably influence our lives in society. This also means producing uncomfortable and challenging works.”10 Tur turns into a prime practitioner of what Mieke Bal and Miguel A. Hernandez-Navarro write as “art can enact small-scale resis- tances against the status quo”. And moreover, “art works as art because it works politically.”11 So, too, does Nasan Tur. The variability of people’s perceptions and reactions depending on their cultural background make up the most important part of the social context that Tur observes and describes. Elemen- tal, human, and yet at times difficult to analyse, humor can be political and is an entry point into diverse cultures as well as a strategy to survive within it. Tur enables a case to focus on how humor works as a captivating mode of expression, a cultural product, and topic for discussion, despite its levity. Humor is a constant in human lives, ever present, although ever-changing, and inextricably tangled up with art. Examining humorous art in its full complexity, however, can reveal not only witty and strategic manipulations but also layered meanings and aesthetic sophistication. Humor surprises and grabs our attention, and that is precisely why artists em- ploy it… and what better place to start from but the self. Needless to say, self-portraiture has a long tradition. As the first ‘snapshot’ of the artist, I would like to focus on a rather contem- porary example of a self-portrait by Nasan Tur where he practices multiple identities. Prior to applying for his German identity card, Tur grew a moustache in order to look like a ‘typical’ Turk and then had his photo taken in this manner. The result is that his ID card shows the pho- tograph of a young man with moustache, apparently fitting to the Turkish name documented on it, however, for the artist, the photograph was a personal performance and experience. “When I applied for a German documentation, I grew a moustache for a few months that 9 Moslund et al., 8. 10 Eugen El, ‘I am a political artist’ interview with Nasan Tur <http://www.schirn.de/en/magazine/interviews/2018_ interview/interview_with_nasan_tur/> (last accessed June 25, 2018). 11 Bal et al., 9.