In the 17th Century, Hezarfen Ahmed Celebi (the Turkish Icarus) managed to fly from the Galata Tower to Uskudar with hand-made wings, which caused him to be sent to exile by Murad Kahn. Living outside the norms Hezarfen Celebi was capable of doing anything he set his mind to, and thus seen as a potentially dangerous man by the powers that be. At least, this is how the story is told by Evliya Çelebi.
In this day and age, street vendors - equipped with their self-designed vehicles on wheels - practicing their illegal and informal activity, play cat and mouse with the authorities in the daedalus* of the streets of Istanbul. It is a daily battle of survival for the very basics of life. Having to exist outside the prescribed rules, they are sometimes tolerated or ignored, but mostly displaced, again and again.
Delphine Rigaud juxtaposes the stories of flying and fleeing by bringing them together through a visual vocabulary drawn from these two epochs and these two states of existence in the 6th issue of Kayisi Kent A4. She dares to ask whether the will to survive and the determination to actualize what your imagination tells you have anything in common.
* Daedalus is a tragic inventor from Greek mythology, father of Icarus, and creator of the Cretan Labyrinth. Daedalus refers to the word dédale in French which also means labyrinth.
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