This summer, Turkish artist Aslı Çavuşoğlu will install her work Pink as a Cabbage/ Green as an Onion/ Blue as an Orange, 2020, in CAMPLE LINE’s downstairs space, opening 6 July. 

Originally commissioned by Kadist, a contemporary art organisation with local hubs in Paris and San Francisco, the work comprises twenty fabrics, each either hand-dyed or embroidered or printed using natural dyes, which Asli produced in collaboration with fifteen Turkish agricultural cooperatives and associations using the produce that they cultivate. Asli will include ten of the fabrics in this new presentation at CAMPLE LINE.  

In an essay accompanying the work’s first installation in Paris in 2020, Özge Ersoy draws lines of connection back to the context of the Gezi Park protests in Istanbul in 2013 and the wider uprisings that then spread across Turkey, writing: ‘Pink as a Cabbage/ Green as an Onion/ Blue as an Orange begins by questioning how the social uprisings in the last decade have shaped the way we reimagine sites of everyday resistance. It is through such events that many of us have realised the potential that everyday acts can have in undermining power structures.’ 

The fifteen food-producing collectives that Asli collaborated with are based across Turkey; some have been long established whilst others have been created more recently. They include, for instance, the Defne Kadim Girisimi Uretim Ve Isletme Kooperatifi (Defne Women’s Initiative, Production and Operation), established in Hatay Province in 2014 with the support of the Foundation for the Evaluation of Women’s Work to take an active role in supporting food production and rural women workers’ rights, and in preserving the local flavours of Antakya.  

Other collaborators include: Hopa Tarimsal Kalkinma Kooperatifi, a cooperative established in 1959 to support tea producers in the Eastern Black Sea region; Yedikule Bostani, an urban garden that has existed in Istanbul for centuries; and Vakifili Köyü Tarimsal Kalkinma Kooperaiti, a food-producing cooperative in the sole remaining Armenian community in Turkey, located in the Hatay province.  

Asli has often reflected on the entangled social and political histories of colour in her work. She has referred to Pink as a Cabbage/ Green as an Onion/ Blue as an Orange as a political history of colour: ‘I see it as an archive of these precious collectives’ – ‘a modest colour archive.’

She began developing the project in 2019, and by early 2020 had visited and begun working with about half of the collectives. The Covid-19 pandemic impacted her ability to work initially with the remaining groups directly, having to rely on digital means of communication and remote collaboration. She has spoken about collecting particular produce from collectives, that were reflective of their place or their agricultural model.  

The project has subsequently been shown at EK BİÇ YE İÇ, a social enterprise in Istanbul, and in Greece as part of the Thessaloniki Biennial in 2023. At each site, the work’s installation adapts; its display is intended to evoke the sense of a market gathering. 

This new presentation at CAMPLE LINE is accompanied by Özge Ersoy’s short essay, initially commissioned by Kadist in 2020 and updated by Özge in 2024. Over the summer, it will host conversations, responses and readings, creating connections with local food and growing initiatives and creative organisations. 

With grateful thanks for Creative Scotland for their funding support.