Gözde Ilkin – The Majority of Accent, 2018-2024

Made from found domestic fabrics — sheets, tablecloths or curtains — which retain memories of everyday life, Gözde Ilkin’s textile pieces explore questions of memory, belonging and social identity. Her painted and embroidered motifs reflect historical and contemporary aspects of power and domination, as well as the processes of transformation and destruction that Man has inflicted on nature. Gözde Ilkin’s work, draws on ecofeminist theories to invent alternative modes of relationship between living beings, focusing on bonds of kinship that have already been forged between different species.

First begun in 2018, Majority of Accent is a patchwork of stories poetically contrasting humans and nature, using the motif of stone as a symbolic repository of the earth’s memory. Inspired by the industrial past and the history of the railway maintenance workshops, Gözde Ilkin’s artwork retraces stories of labour, struggle and friendship, based on first-hand accounts gathered from former workers at the SNCF site. Through visual and sound fragments of union slogans, floral and animal symbols, such as the bull — the nickname given to the workers when they left the engineering centre “in a herd” — Gözde Ilkin’s installation interweaves the personal memories and collective experiences of the work landscape and the natural landscape of La Mulatière. Combining photography, painting, sewing and sound, Majority of Accent weaves shared narratives to create an alternative archive of the Grandes Locos in textiles.