It was a great reception on Oct 15 at Opel Plaza Art Gallery with approximately 150 guests. The car show saloon was beautifully decorated by the team of Merit Hotel Lefkosa and delicate food was offered. Mehmet Sebep, the director of Karkot Ltd poured out delicious Küp Wine from a sophicasted wine barrel tank to keep it cool. My thanks go to them. Salih Toros, the director of Opel House said that he had never experienced such a splendid opening night before in his Plaza Gallery.

Heidi Trautmann opened the exhibition with her speech:

SEVGİLİ DOSTLARIM, my dear friends, meine lieben Freunde,

In the back of your mind many of you may think right now, why must there always be talks before the opening of an exhibition? However, for many it is actually the only possibility to communicate directly, eye in eye, and you are obliged to listen. I like that. Perhaps for this reason some people decide to become politicians?

I believe in communication. I need to go out and meet people. I want their views and later I want to think about it, perhaps I change my attitude. Do you? Yes, I think, you do, because you have come here to listen to what I have to say, to see what I have to show.

Is our opinion important to society? Yes, I think so, at least we want to believe it. We live in times of democracy and in democracy you are permitted to say your word, to raise your voice in criticism, and not be punished, to criticize people in important positions where they have been placed by the people in first place…….and if they do wrong we should bring it to the surface.  Please do raise your voice of criticism should you dare to have anything to say against my art work. However, I have little to do with politics but with human beings.

My world in sketches: Nothing but sketches where I have assumed a certain situation, a position in which I have planted the model sitting or moving in front of me, that means manipulation. I had said before, along with my invitation that we - on our daily roads of life – are confronted with so many obstacles suddenly appearing, that I have put my models under the same stress. Try to fit in, I said. Make the best of the situation if you want to survive as a drawing. Do we see the persons in our surroundings or any objects as they really are? We see what we want to see, we wear an image in front of our eyes. Whatever your belief is, a conformist, a free thinker, a pacifist, a nationalist, a caricaturist, a house wife or a husband, you will see things according to the rules you grew up with. But when you have to do with people and you want to understand them, you have to empty your mind like emptying a bowl and have to receive the signals and information sent by your vis-à-vis, by means of words, mimicry and body language. Oskar Niemeyer must have had the same idea when he designed  the National Congress building in Brasilia.

I have had all the opportunities to meet with people, intensively so, by my interviewing artists, literature and theatre people, which resulted in a book, and in this case by working together with a group of artist friends now for five years to meet regularly once a week to work with a live model. I want to thank my artist friends for sharing this experience with me and I want to thank all the models so patiently sitting and dancing for us, be it Bella, Leonie, Radia, Joe and Mustafa and so many others.

I also want to thank Salih Toros for being the host again, for the second time, and I want to thank my sponsors: to Birol Bebek from Zoom Magazine for his belief in me, to Mine Gürsel from Merit Hotel Lefkosa for her kindness to round up the event with tables full of delicious snacks, and to Mehmet Sebep from Karkot Trading with his delicious Küp Wine who is a believer in organic food. And I want to thank Nazif Bozatli for his endless kindness and friendship, advice and support, and now his interpretation of what I had said.

And last but not least, thank you all for coming to share this evening with me and for the opportunity to communicate.

My friends Tüneysel and Cathrin will assist you should you have questions.

The comments by the viewers were to confirm that they had well accepted my special way of presentation which made me very glad. Many said that they had expected to find true sketches but found finished compositions and others meant that this was true contemporary art.

I want to take this opportunity to thank again my friend and sponsors for the lovely evening! For those who were not able to come to my exhibition I place some of my work on my website here.

Heidi Trautmann