The Familiar Scenes of Melancholy
A ROOM WITHOUT A VIEW

Each one of the “rooms without a view” is seen as replacements for lost love, heavy
disillusionments or longing and hope. The predominant image that demands attention in
these scenes is a “woman” who seems to belong to a world of fantasy/melancholy. Her
existence is highly dubious, for she appears like a fleeting shadow in the room. The bodily
gestures of the female image, reflected in the movements of the shadow, help to increase
this psychic tension. The shadow-woman is like the enigmatic remnant of a faded past
and/or a fantasy, and it is not clear whether she heals or destroys. For the most part, the
shadow is defined as the expression of unreality (1) , but it cannot be denied that it also offers
proof of actually being there. Naturally, the shadow of an objective thing has to wait for
light to emerge. Just as the shadow is proof of objective reality and existence, so too the
woman in the Room without a View insists on making her existence known. The shadow
woman takes refuge in an involvement that both discloses her and creates the essence of
her secret. Our gaze wanders on the uncertainty of the woman’s existence. We do not see
her; rather, we with her or from her point of view. The transient consistency of the shadow
simultaneously desires both disclosure and secrecy. What the shadow seen in Batıbeki’s
compositions registers are traces, remnants, and the echoes of the past.

There ara continuities of organization among the scenes in these five rooms. How time
flows, how space is perceived, and how the relationship between objects within that space
is positioned are determined through a sequential story. The details are not organized
hierarchically, each piece that makes up the sum is treated equally, and no object is superior
to any image. Nonetheless, the vividly expressed atmosphere has a poetical language that
contains metaphors, hidden references, and messages. The fact that the windows in Panel I
and II are devoid of any function becomes immediately apparent. They are either closed or
covered with curtains. The cassettes, statuettes, black-and-white photographs carrying
traces of the past, color postcards reminding a distant memory, clocks that point to a
suspended time, pictures of actors, seashells, and pearls – pieces of reality that are lined on
the shelves of an old bedside cabinet seem to be frozen within a time capsule, with a worn-
out wall paper as their backdrop. In Panel III and V, we see windowless rooms with no
connection to the outside world. On the table one sees a book left there a minute ago, half
a cup of coffee, and a cigarette butt, its smoke just dispersed. The bare floor, dark mirrors,
and the feeling of brute emptiness that the frames standing against the wall give all create
an eerie atmosphere. Panel IV is different from the others in that there is a room only
recently and suddenly abandoned. There are traces of a circular rite in the room, with
playing cards used for telling fortunes are scattered on the table. The symbols of loneliness
are still legible in the coffee grounds left in the cup, in which hopes, expectations, and
longings had been sought.
(1) Önay Sözer, “Işığın Metafiziğinden Gölgenin Estetiğine”, Sanat Dünyamız, Istanbul: YKY, 2000, no. 77, p.171.

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