On the one side of the billboard promoting the installation by the artist Cana Bilir-Meier is an extract from the poem “I want to live” by the poetess Semra Ertan dating from 1982 in German and Turkish. On the other side, handwritten on a blue background, are the words “Düşler Ülkesi”, which can be translated literally from Turkish as “Land of Dreams”.
“Düşler Ülkesi” refers to an activist play for children and young people, organised by creative migrant artists from Munich and directed by Erman Okay. The play premiered in the Urban Theatre of Youth in Munich in 1982. Zühal Bilir-Meier, the mother of the artist, worked on the project as a social educator and assistant director. The piece not only deals with scenes from the everyday lives of working-class migrants, but also with topics such as desires, utopias and prejudices.
The poetess Semra Ertan is an aunt of the artist. Her poetry is inseparably connected with the political circumstances of her time. Among other things, she tackles social injustice, racism and the lack of gender equality.
Cana Bilir-Meier recollects the play and the poetess Semra Ertan and makes her stories visible in the urban environment. She thereby points out the importance of activist-educational community work and the life work of people like Semra Ertan. The resistance and self-empowerment of working-class migrants are only seldom a part of the social narrative. The work is an attempt to honour the multi-faceted stories in our society.
Cana Bilir-Meier, born in 1986 in Munich, lives and works in Vienna and Munich.
