Abstract
As one of the fashionable artists of our time, Hussein Chalayan has also become an agent of
the counter-hegemonic discourse by fusing fashion and arts with cultural studies. Turkish
Cypriot by origin but English by settlement, Hussein Chalayan articulates the contemporary
phenomena and concerns, such as immigration or multiculturalism and tests the moments
of encounter, conflict and hybridity of different identities and cultures. The encounters are
not only given from the perspective of the immigrants who try to integrate into the new
communities (such as Chalayan himself) but from the viewpoint of the old-colonizers
themselves. Using the lens of transnationalism, immigration and hybridity, I will be analyzing
Chalayan’s three projects, namely Afterwords (2000), Temporal Meditations (2003) and
Absence Presence (2005). With this research, I will not only try to understand his works and
how he reflects his contemporary concerns, but how the socio-political circumstances can be
read by decentralizing the creator from the focal point of the artistic process.
Keywords: Transnationalism, transnational migration, hybridity, identity, fashion
Aksel, Damla B. "Transnationalism and hybridity in the art of Hussein Chalayan", Trespassing Nation, 1, 2012.
Article accessible at: http://trespassingjournal.com/?page_id=194
As one of the fashionable artists of our time, Hussein Chalayan has also become an agent of
the counter-hegemonic discourse by fusing fashion and arts with cultural studies. Turkish
Cypriot by origin but English by settlement, Hussein Chalayan articulates the contemporary
phenomena and concerns, such as immigration or multiculturalism and tests the moments
of encounter, conflict and hybridity of different identities and cultures. The encounters are
not only given from the perspective of the immigrants who try to integrate into the new
communities (such as Chalayan himself) but from the viewpoint of the old-colonizers
themselves. Using the lens of transnationalism, immigration and hybridity, I will be analyzing
Chalayan’s three projects, namely Afterwords (2000), Temporal Meditations (2003) and
Absence Presence (2005). With this research, I will not only try to understand his works and
how he reflects his contemporary concerns, but how the socio-political circumstances can be
read by decentralizing the creator from the focal point of the artistic process.
Keywords: Transnationalism, transnational migration, hybridity, identity, fashion
Aksel, Damla B. "Transnationalism and hybridity in the art of Hussein Chalayan", Trespassing Nation, 1, 2012.
Article accessible at: http://trespassingjournal.com/?page_id=194
