Page - 102 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 4/2018

102 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 4 2o18 Lora Sariaslan | The Art of Migration and then abstracts, critiques, and exaggerates them and then presents them back to us. Although his work is not limited to it, a survey of Koçyigit’s practice – which in addi- tion to photography includes video installa- tion, sculpture and two-dimensional works – reveals his dedication to exploring nation and belonging according to shifts, overlaps, and unaccountable modifications. His recent engagement with mapping takes his work to a new phase, as the artist comprehends the world around him by surveying, measuring, marking, tracing, collecting and (re)creating information. Adding the representational language of mapping into his long-stand- ing artistic vocabulary of handcraft, Koçy- iğit moves into a new territory in his work since 2016: imaginary maps that connect the real geographies to his imagined ones through textiles. He appropriates this system of data compression to depict imaginary ge- ographies on hand-sewn surfaces in his new collages. He initiates a personal investigation into limits, borders crossed, and obstacles that await through this mapping project. Through his imaginary maps, Koçyiğit creates statements on politics, current affairs, and geography. The intertwined themes of statelessness, citizenship, and migration become key subjects. His works break down the complexities into bite-sized pieces, showing how each part functions in relation to the whole; thus, he proposes an insight into how the system works and, moreover, offers a new version. As he unfolds alternative histories and cultural mappings, he in- corporates diverse textiles to weave together different geographies, histories, and presents them on one canvas. Through the colorful pieces of textiles, Koçyiğit constructs political spaces. His art operates through them and also results in them. This is why it is profoundly political, not as a side effect or thematic preoccupation but qua art. He reveals what frontiers have done to societies and what societies are doing to frontiers. Because textiles are portable, wearable and displayable, their performative qualities result in the multivalent meanings that Koçyiğit presents in his work. Textiles internally represent a con- fluence of messages because they operate within multiple systems of signs/ costume, ceremonies of state, memorial display, and personal / cooperative / national identity to name a few. Perhaps more than any other art form, textiles amplify and even reveal the appreciation of the inherent flexibility of signs. Servet Koçyiğit, well aware of this power, has been searching and acquiring diverse textiles in his motherland of Turkey and this quest (still) continues in the different countries that the artist lives in and visits. East By Night (2015) (Fig. 8) is his first work that Fig. 9: Servet Koçyiğit, Golden Lining, 2016. Textile collage, embroidery on textile, paint, 120 x 170 cm. Courtesy of the artist.