I will be a soldier 2
I will be a soldier 2 (Asker olacağım 2), (2017) explores a counterpoint of male and female coded imagery. It uses the form of the cross-stitch, associated with women’s domestic handcraft, to create silhouettes of toy soldiers that are typically associated with boyhood games. Rendered on two fabric panels, the imagery seems to hover between the handmade and the pixelated, with the fabric doubling the ephemerality of the digital screen. Each panel features a frieze of toy soldiers in eight different positions that mirror one another, the only difference being the slightly different cloud configurations. The virtual doubling adds an uncanny effect, and simultaneously points to the tension between childhood play and reality of role-playing as a precursor for real military service. Çiftçi’s framing of such tensions through a medium associated with women’s domestic labour seems to destabilise this familiar imagery, using the unassuming cross-stitch as a form of provocation. The work also plays with the correspondence between the cross-stitch and the pixel, evoking the appearance of an old-school video game; the cloud imagery is in fact derived from the Super Mario Bros. video games of the early 1980s, where two plumbers fight to save a princess. Çiftçi thus alludes to the tropes of masculine heroism that are conveyed to children through such games, particularly encouraging boys to role-play as heroes, warriors or even martyrs.