The duo's most recent works are now on display at Artane, a contemporary art center in İstanbul's Cihangir neighborhood, under the title “Travelogue.”Best known internationally for their installations made using pieces of old clothes, Guerra de la Paz, whose name translates as “War of the Peace,” introduce their newest works made of photographs they took during various trips around the world in the last two years in this current show, which runs through the end of October. The pair explains the works in the show as being “an autobiographical journey into their psyche via the photo-documentations of environments and experiences in their travel history.”
The two tell the story of "Travelogue" to Sunday's Zaman.
How did you come up with the name Guerra de la Paz?
Neraldo de la Paz: We started working together, we were thinking about a name, we started to think of different words, and we said maybe we should use only our own names. And we said “La Paz Guerra” together, and it didn't sound very good so we turned it around, and we both exclaimed, “Oh boy, this is good!” It was kind of like an evolution.
Alain Guerra: We also wanted our identity of collaboration to be one. We didn't want to be two individuals but one single collaborative group, so we wanted to come up with a single name, and giving our last names was probably the most obvious thing that we could come up with -- and the most powerful, I think. No one believes that those are our last names.
De la Paz: It's so abstract that it seems fabricated.
How did you decide to work together?
De la Paz: We both stopped working individually. We can only work collaboratively now. Earlier on, the process was a little bit more difficult because you have to learn each other's idiosyncrasies. You know, my way is not his way and his way is not my way. You have to learn to compromise. And how we started to work together is we rented a studio, a warehouse to share. He was working on his things and I was working on my things. And as we were each working on our own things, the other person would come and say, “This would be better if you did this,” like constructive criticism, but at the same time it's like the idea of saying, “Why don't we just make something together?” So we did another one and another one and we could not lose interest in what we were doing because we discovered that our interests were very similar. We like the same kind of music, we like the same kind of architecture, art… We're very different people, but it seems we have a lot in common.
Guerra: Also, our differences are what reinforce us.
De la Paz: And when one of us is a little bit weaker, the other is able to pick up. I value his opinion and I think he values mine a lot. And when we don't agree on something, we try to have a conversation about it. And if we can't come to an agreement, we just put it aside.
Guerra: Because ultimately we both have to be satisfied with the direction in which something is going.
How do you both understand that the work is finished?
De la Paz: It's kind of abstract, but when you can't do anything more to it, you can't add anything to make it look better. I think it's intuition that tells you when it's done.
Guerra: I think the piece tells you. And you just feel as if you can't put anything more on it and so you move on to the next one. The work dictates to you when it's finished.
In "Travelogue," does each photograph represent one country?
Guerra: Each photo is one destination, it's one city or one area. For example, if it's İstanbul, it's İstanbul, nowhere in Turkey but İstanbul. The same is for London, for Liverpool, not any other place in England, but Liverpool is Liverpool and London is London.
What cities are represented?
Guerra: There's London, Liverpool, Basel, Berlin, İstanbul, Venice, Miami…
De la Paz: Washington, D.C. and a little town in southern Germany.
Guerra: And it consists of the last two years of our lives. So here are the places that we've been to in the last two years. We started in İstanbul but ended up in Basel.
Did you decide to do this project before you set out on the road?
Guerra: No, this is something that came about because Sevil (Sevil Sert, the gallery owner) offered us the show. And we really had to take a lot of traveling with the show -- she originally wanted a big installation. But we had to come out with a show that we could put in our suitcases and travel with us. And that's how the photographs came about, because we had so many snapshots of our travels. And also those clothes came with us in our suitcases.
De la Paz: All the clothes used are the clothes that we got from [İstanbul's] Fatih [district]. They're all remnants, so they're all leftovers.
Guerra: All the clothes that are hanging there are usually garbage that the third world, [even] the poorest country in the Americas, doesn't want. And we believe in the idea that we're [adding] purpose [to those clothes]. We also really enjoy how people really love it after it's been [processed as an artwork] at a level at which one would think you would not want it again. You pick it up, you use it in a different environment and all of a sudden everybody loves it.
De la Paz: The same thing goes for the photos. When you travel, or even when you're at a family party, you take a lot of pictures and then you think of where to put them. We had so many memories occupy a lot of space on a hard drive in terms of photographs -- you don't want to throw them away because they are memories. And this exhibition is how this work evolves. We've never thought about it, it was kind of like, what can we do that can really be a striking show that we can carry and people can relate to from all over the world. Our work has been very nicely received. Some people respond to the colors, some people to the images, some single out details that they like. You see a kind of travel in their minds.
Can we also speak of the biographies of the clothes you use in your installations?
De la Paz: It's an unknown biography to us because we don't know who wore them. But obviously there are people who lived with these clothes. There are items, there are some dresses which have rips all over them and we don't know how they came to be. It's the lifespan of a human being represented in clothes and the clothes are like a kind of community, a coming together of different individuals who make up one. And it's a reoccurring subject because the clothes are recycled.
Guerra: These are all anonymous; there's a mystery about them which we're drawn to. But you put the clothes together with something else in your mind and all of a sudden it comes alive. It's like giving someone a second chance.
De la Paz: But I like the fact that the clothes are unwanted. People just don't see any beauty in them. However, when you put them together, you're making really lovely objects, installations, images from garbage and it proves that there's beauty in everything and that art is everywhere. It's just a matter of looking.
How do you prefer to qualify your works?
De la Paz: We try to be objective. The photographs are probably the most autobiographical works, but they are also not really about us. They're about the places that we go to. We can also do some social commentary on a darker subject, [such as] the negative side of humanity on the other side. We think about nature and things that give us joy, so this interplay between good and evil is in a way in our works.
Guerra: It's really a human experience to like this, good or bad. There's everything in between. We don't want to limit ourselves to anything particular. We do comment on contemporary life, contemporary culture and references to history are prominent, too. We look at the parallels between life now and life in the past.
De la Paz: Also, sometimes there's a particular piece of clothing that you pick up. We found really strange things, especially with handmade clothes, because they have much more personality. When you work with those kinds of things, it triggers some part of your head and from those thoughts serious work can be made. People started to give us ties and there were so many of them that we said, “What are we going to do with them?” Then we started to talk about how we don't like wearing ties, and then we said maybe we can make ropes out of ties and then we can make nooses out of them.
Guerra: We then obviously come to the business world. There's a lot of dialogue happening, especially in the States, everything that's going on in the banking system, politics…
De la Paz: We don't really comment by saying, “This is bad.” We just [raise a point].
You say you have a universal message. What is that message?
De la Paz: Number one is that we're all human, we all cry, we all have to eat, we all deserve the same rights. We take a humanistic approach, meaning everything's equal. I think our work “Pieta” is a very powerful piece. During the war in Iraq, there was a woman who was protesting against the war outside the White House because she didn't believe in the war. Her son had been killed, and that moved us; a mother stood for her rights and for her son's rights. Everyone has a mother; they don't have faces, it's a mother and they're her child. It's universal; when a mother loses her child, it doesn't matter what nationality she is -- she feels the same pain. We don't try to give a specific message, but the technique we use has a lot to do with the power of peace.
And what will you do next? Will you display this exhibition in any other country?
De la Paz: Well, we made this specifically for here.
Guerra: But we'll continue to make more.
De la Paz: Yeah, this is something that we are going to do until we die because we're always going to travel and we're going to take pictures. There's also something nice in being able to make things from your experiences. We've been taking pictures in İstanbul like crazy. We don't travel without a camera. In this one, we've tried to make people very small and in the background.
What about this policeman in one of your photographs?
De la Paz: That was in Sultanahmet and he posed for us. He was very nice. At first, I was trying to take pictures behind the tree, and he saw and he smiled and didn't do anything. And I just got up and said, “Can I?” And he posed with his machine gun.
Do you have any anecdotes about your trips and your project?
De la Paz: Every picture has some memories because you take photos since you are attracted to what you see. The color in İstanbul is amazing. The language, the words, the signs…
Guerra: To be honest, we've made many trips to the US and we haven't taken so many pictures. Maybe it's because it's familiar. When it's foreign to you, it wakes you up.
De la Paz: When you're unfamiliar, you are more conscious because you look more. You take for granted whatever is in your own familiar environment. There's so much energy in İstanbul, probably more than anywhere than I've been to. And in this show among 40 photographs, there are eight or nine of İstanbul, more than from anywhere else.
Guerra: We're trying to capture the essence of the city. We photograph city cats because there are cats everywhere; we photograph the mosques and the beautiful palace and try to put them all together. We try to capture the depth of the city. If you go into the history of the city, you'll find Ottoman remains, then Byzantine, then it goes until the Neolithic.
"Travelogue" is on display until Oct. 31 at the Artane art gallery, located on Sanatkarlar Cad., Balaban Bey Çıkmazı, Uzay Apt., No: 1, Cihangir. The gallery is open 10 a.m.-7 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday.
