50 Years of the Türkischer Frauenverein Berlin: Women’s Power, Building Bridges, and Inspiring Change
A project in collaboration with Türkischer Frauenverein Berlin
This collaboration celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Türkischer Frauenverein Berlin, the city's first migrant women's association. Founded on March 8, 1975, the association has been a powerful advocate for self-empowerment, social justice, and solidarity, championing the rights of women from Turkey and transnational communities.
Drawing from the archive of unpublished documents, participatory workshops, and informal interviews, we aim to celebrate the resilience and activism of migrant women, many of whom are from the working class.
Chapter I: Anniversary of the Association
As the launch of the project, Orta Okul created an exhibition including three works inspired by the archive of the Türkischer Frauenverein Berlin: a collection of original photographs and posters from protests in the 1970s and 80s, a chronology featuring unpublished documents, photographs, and informal interviews from the archive, and A Minor Detail, a participatory artwork exploring the minor details in grand narratives and historiography. The exhibition was opened on March 8th 2025, in the anniversary of the association.
Chapter II: Unheard Stories
The project Unheard Stories: Women of the Berlin Turkey Women’s Association and Beyond honors the 50-year history of the first independent migrant women’s association in Berlin, and the women who shaped its legacy. Following an exhibition and discussion on June 20 at the association’s premises, a series of participatory events will unfold throughout the summer of 2025.
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Küçük Bir Ayrıntı (A Minor Detail)
Küçük Bir Ayrıntı (A Minor Detail) workshop is inspired by two women: Palestinian author Adania Shibli, who, in her book of the same name, addresses the place of minor details within grand narratives, and Beser Sonar, who, when she first moved to Germany, had to cook her meals without salt for weeks because she didn’t know what salt was called in German. In this workshop, different generations of migrant women from Turkey came together around a table to make clay tablets inscribed with minor details from migration experiences.This work will be part of the 50th-anniversary exhibition of the Türkiye Kadinlar Birliği (Women's Union of Turkey), on the evening of Saturday, March 8th.
Tea Sugar Dream
Tea Sugar Dream focused on the themes of migration and joy, in collaboration with women who migrated from Turkey to Berlin during the 1960s and 70s. How did women, who moved to Germany without knowing the language and often worked in low-paying jobs or unpaid domestic labor, preserve their joy during their migration experiences? Could their methods serve as guidance for new generations of migrants? Building on these questions, Tea Sugar Dream carried out projects centered on collective joy.
This collage was created in October 2023 by a group of migrant women, and was dısplayed on a billboard in Berlin.