As a Chinese philosopher once said, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
2010 has been a year of preparations and anticipation to launch the Turkish Women's International Network. Our goal is to provide a global trust network for accomplished Turkish women around the world and their community.
TurkishWIN's kick-off event took place on November 11th in New York City and featured Defne Ayas, Arthub Asia Director and Performa Curator. Split between Shanghai and New York, Defne Ayas works as a director of programs to Arthub Asia, a multi-disciplinary organization devoted to contemporary art creation in China and rest of Asia, and as an art history professor at New York University in Shanghai. Ayas is also curator of PERFORMA since 2004, the biennial visual art performance of New York City, where she has presented more than fifty live performances and performance-related programs with an international roster of artists, curators, and critical thinkers.
Defne's talk's title was "Goddesses: Goddesses may take us to the very heart of what it is to be a woman." She shared with us the connections between the goddess culture and our contemporary lived experience and what it is that we share with our ancestors. The talk promises to be a visual compendium from a variety of contexts, encompassing both Eastern and Western references, with a special focus on Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, and draws upon art, mythology, and spirituality. With illuminating commentary, Defne positions a group of fascinating Goddesses within their cultural context, from those of the early Egyptian civilization to the forgotten pre-Islamic Arab ones as found in art and literature. Surveyed together, goddesses promise to reveal many of the most fundamental archetypes of a woman's universal experience in this world. Interested in the universal power of female deities and their expression in society, Defne aims to bridge the gap between religions and civilizations and remind us of the lost connections in-between. was an amazing success.
You can watch Defne's talk here. The pictures of the event are below. Join us at Facebook to hear about upcoming events!
