Güler Ates

White Shadow, 2012, C-type archival print, 29 x 29 cm; ©️ Güler Ates

Walking in Newness of Life

Commentary by Laura Popoviciu

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She walks. Not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit (Romans 8:4). By faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7). She walks in love (Ephesians 5:2), guided by the spirit.

In Güler Ates’s White Shadow, a floating apparition cuts across the darkness: ethereal, mysterious, elusive. The delicate white tulle, which gracefully accompanies her, barely outlines her silhouette. Like incense, it only allows a quick glimpse of the turquoise silk garment that veils her body. She is in transit in this interplay between revealing and concealing. Inside her tightly wrapped fabric she makes subtle moves to dispel the darkness, while the artist waits with her camera for a flicker of natural light. Until then, the performer has time to reflect and ask questions such as: ‘who occupied these shadows before me?’.

Inside the grand rooms at Great Fosters, Egham, UK, where this photograph was taken, the traces of the past are absorbed into the heavy folds of the crimson patterned drapery, the damask covered walls, the intricately carved Quattrocento doors, and the thick Tudor brickwork. Here, the heavy steps of Henry VIII mingle with the subtle ones of Elizabeth I.

In her discreet yet haunting presence, Ates’s mysterious figure stands for those who once inhabited this space and also those to come—layers upon layers, garments over garments; all under one roof, taking refuge inside her veil. Ates often sees the fabric which her collaborator wears as a sanctuary or a tent, an anchor in the face of displacement, drawn from Ates’s own experience as a UK-based artist from the displaced Zaza Alevi community in Eastern Turkey.

The apostle Paul spent much of his time walking: from Antioch to Cyprus and Damascus, and from Jerusalem to Rome. Between East and West. Making tents and writing letters to the Gentiles. His apostleship encouraged a pathway from darkness to light, where darkness is overcome through baptism, ‘a death to sin’ which leads to a resurrection in and with Christ.

Ates’s figure gives a performance that uses light in the service of light. As heavy as her body may be, carrying the weight of a lifetime, the tulle is diaphanous, uplifting, bathed in light.

Wherever she may go, she is not alone. She has the White Shadow by her side to guide her as she ‘walks in newness of life’ (Romans 6:4).

 

References

Conversation with Güler Ates, February 2024

Marcelle Joseph Projects. 2011. ‘Güler Ates: Present and Absent, 2011, press release’ (Egham: Marcelle Joseph Projects)

O’Halloran, David. 2013. Burqas, Veils, and Hoodies: Identity and Representation (Melbourne: Walker Street Gallery and Arts Centre), pp. 9–10

Rosen, Aaron. 2019. ‘Güler Ates. Absorbing Histories’, in Brushes with Faith. Reflections and Conversations on Contemporary Art (Eugene: Cascade Books), pp. 119–29

See full exhibition for Romans 6

Romans 6

Revised Standard Version

6 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? 3Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. 7For he who has died is freed from sin. 8But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. 9For we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10The death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. 11So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. 13Do not yield your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but yield yourselves to God as men who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments of righteousness. 14For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

15 What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16Do you not know that if you yield yourselves to any one as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, 18and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. 19I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once yielded your members to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now yield your members to righteousness for sanctification.

20 When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21But then what return did you get from the things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death. 22But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the return you get is sanctification and its end, eternal life. 23For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

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