Cappadocia - Land of wonder, Land of Dreams…

With the support of the European Culture Foundation’s STEP Beyond Mobility Found we went to Cappadocia for a one month stay in the Babayan Culture House. Our mission was to see how the Culture House works, how it’s organized, and how it cooperates with other organizations. We want to establish an art residency in Macedonia and the research from this journey will be essential for defining the project.
The House is situated on a marvelous location in the Ibrahimpasha village, or old Babayan, on the Anatolian plateau. Two valleys flank the house and meet in front of it giving the most magnificent Cappadocian view. The hosts, Willemijn Bouman and Paul Broekman, both professional Dutch artists, located the ancient house, restored it and renovated the guestrooms turning it in a perfect mixture of traditional ambient and modern comfort. While running the Culture House, they are not only culturally active but are also initiating ecological improvement with the Art/Eco platform and the EKOKAP Project.

There we met many artists from all over the world, Stefan Chinov (Bulgaria), Josie Martin (New Zeeland), Rosa Calull (Spain), Tina Eskilsson (Sweden), Karl Ciesluk (Canada), Susan Mains (Grenada), Mai Schildkamp (Netherlands), and others. The dinners prepared by Paul were very delicious and always in good company spiced with rich, diverse and profound discussions.

The most magnificent thing in Cappadocia is the landscape itself. The plateau had been covered with volcanic ash in ages of eruption, forming the specific tufa rock. The rock is prone to erosion and very easily carved and in time the land was shaped by natural forces and the hand of man into a true wonder of the world.
In the open air museum near Goreme we were amazed by the many underground churches, and were especially surprised by the decorations of the churches done in the iconoclastic period. This and the semi preserved frescoes of the 11-th and 12-th century were a major inspiration for us there, alongside the breathtaking landscape of the region.

We walked a day-long hike through the Red and Rose valleys, we went eight floors down the ancient underground city at Derinkuyu, we climbed the rock-tower at Ortahisar, and had a hot air balloon ride.

It was fantastic to be inspired by this land and work while we were there. We’ve done many drawings, paintings and sculptures in the local stone and we wanted to exhibit, but we had no time to prepare a satisfying quality and quantity of works for an exhibition, so we left that for another time. As Willemijn pointed out to us – one month is not nearly enough for Cappadocia, not even two months are, in fact you can never have enough.

Our partnership with the Babayan Culture House opens the possibility to cooperate with the Cappadocia Culture Center and other cultural institutions.
We later went to Avanos, on the Kizil Irmak (Red River) to visit the Çeç Pottery Workshop.
We also met with Kaan and Gülhan Sarı, members of FabrikartGroup and director and co-director (respectively) of the Annual Contemporary Art Festival in Mustafapasha. We determined the possibilities for collaboration. They accepted our proposal for cooperation and invited us to present Macedonia on the next edition of the Festival with a group of painters, musicians, and filmmakers.
We also looked around the Cappadocia Vocational School where the festival is held.

One of the most exciting things was meeting Süreyya Aytaş who immediately recognized our language and began talking to us in Macedonian. We were very surprised. She is a representative of a culturally distinctive group that lives in Mustafapasha, and was brought to Cappadocia from the Balkan in 1929. She gave us a book and a documentary that she’s done about the customs and history of this group. We haven’t herd this story and weren’t expecting Macedonian speaking people in the middle of Turkey, but upon our return we found out that this is a known historical matter, and that the Turkish government acknowledges the origin and different tradition of this people. We plan to show the documentary in Skopje and initiate a filming of a Macedonian documentary on the subject. The partnership with Süreyya Aytaş is a firm base for future developing of international cooperation between Macedonia and Turkey, with the accent on Mustafapasha.

There are many established collaborations, and wonderful meetings, and adventures and things that we will hold in our hearts from this unique place. The Turkish tee we had every evening while we watched the sun set and a bright star go behind the horizon soon after nightfall, the sounds of birds and the tranquility of the valleys, and bathing in the Cappadocian wild breeze that comes and goes on the most surprising moments shifting its direction. So many stories to tell of friendship, beauty and adventure. But it is only so clear if you go there and see Cappadocia for yourself, where people are of the kindest, and the land holds beauty and surprise on every step, where the Muslim prayers echo through the breathtaking valleys, under the shadow of the Vulcan Erciyes and the hundreds balloons hanging in the morning light!