Name: Mehmet Yashin
Country Of Origin: Cyprus
Country Now Residing: Cyprus, Turkey, UK
Title: A Ghost
English translation from Turkish original: Taner Baybars
Phoenician inscribers of epitaphs were killed by warriors who were Phoenicians themselves, because they advocated an end to the war with the Greeks, and those who remained, continued to live like ghosts under threat of death.
From a tombstone in Idalion, Cyprus, 8c BC
Only as a ghost can I now return to my own home,
emerging from blurred mirrors. I haven’t much time.
I throw the windows open, in pitch dark, starlight
floods the rooms, I shake the dust off the curtains,
off the linen draped over bookshelves, I must also clean
with moist breath the family pictures in frames.
The avenging angels of this polyglot house, now silenced,
make every one who enters it, promise to write
against wars, against everything jingoist, even tongues.
Sprinkle the antkiller around like enchanted words,
the mothballs. I’ve wiped the floors clean. I lock the doors,
and I’m off again, no one has even seen me.
I’m a phantom… they can’t have me killed.
Mehmet Yashin 1996
About IMCA
IMCA is both a virtual and itinerant Independent Museum of Contemporary Art founded by NeMe in order to present exhibitions, performances, new media events, symposia etc. The form of the IMCA is determined as a practice or process by the nature of each project with the notion of the exhibition "space" being constantly revised and redefined. If you wish to receive news from us please subscribe to our newsletter.
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