Gulsun Karamustafa’s video installation, The Settlers, features two women, each on a separate screen, with a picturesque landscape behind them. The two screens simulate river banks, serving as a space for the stories of those who were forced to leave their physical and spiritual home and their memories behind. The films are screened simultaneously. During the screening each presented image is replaced by the other. Each film starts on one screen, crosses the virtual boundary toward the adjacent screen, where it ends, and so on and so forth. The Settlers is a poetic piece recounting the story of two women living on opposite banks of a river. Each ends her life on the other bank, where she confronts the other’s environment, a place which was supposed to mark a fresh new start, but can never be so, due to the emotional baggage left by the war. The work is dedicated to those who were driven out of their homes between 1877 and 1994 during the endless wars in the Balkans.
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