
Apolonia Sokol
Lale Müldür, 2022
Oil on linen
92 x 65 cm
Reflecting on gendered and racialized bodies in representation throughout history, Apolonia Sokol’s paintings often depict her friends, lovers and collaborators as icons of radical subjectivity. This portrait, dedicated to the...
Reflecting on gendered and racialized bodies in representation throughout history, Apolonia Sokol’s paintings often depict her friends, lovers and collaborators as icons of radical subjectivity. This portrait, dedicated to the iconoclastic Turkish poet Lale Müldür brings forth the complicated question of childbearing in a female life dedicated to artistic and literary creation. Known for her refusal to become a physiological mother, much like Apolonia Sokol herself, Lale Müldür, whose famous verse “Mom, Am I A Barbarian?” became the title of the 13th Istanbul Biennial in 2013, is depicted with a doll in her arms. This doll, wearing a green bunny costume has become a symbol of the poet herself as she found and carried it with her in the streets of Istanbul wherever she went, claiming that this was her symbolical child, with whom she communicated telepathically. By depicting Lale Müldür, Apolonia Sokol elevates this idiosyncratic figure of feminism in contemporary Mediterranean cultures, into a sacred and mythological icon.