Berna Tonyalı

Reflection, 2017, Installation, variable dimensions

In this sense, Queen Victoria—whose authority defined one of the most significant periods in art history, the Victorian era, for nearly a century—is the figure who has influenced me most and embodies the notion of power within the installation. The principal element of the work is a wallpaper based on a star map, inspired by Robert Gober and the astronomer Johann Bayer. Taking Bayer’s Uranometria as my point of departure, I overlaid the night sky as it appeared on the date of Queen Victoria’s birth with a contemporary celestial map, creating a new cosmography—a universe in which yesterday and today coexist.

Against this backdrop, the serpent motif, which carries the entire work within its coils, represents the constellation Ophiuchus (the Serpent Bearer), which dominated the sky on that particular date. Positioned upon the serpent’s head is an oil portrait depicting Queen Victoria as a white lamb dressed in her wedding gown. This image is inspired by a portrait commissioned by the Queen from the court painter Franz Xaver Winterhalter. An icon crafted from pure gold rises from the serpent’s uppermost coil.At the serpent’s tail appears the shadowed image of a nude female body. This drawing is based on one of a series of erotic photographs taken by the photographer Auguste Belloc during the 1840s, over which I have cast a shadow, transforming the original image into a drawing. At the base of the installation stands a hollowed-out wooden writing desk, serving as an objectified expression of the censorship imposed upon art during the Victorian period, particularly upon literature. Finally, the portrait of a monkey, enclosed within a black frame like an animal confined to a cage, represents humanity itself—with all of its anxieties, contradictions, and inner turmoil.