The leading artist of the project, also a shepherd from the pastoralist community of Northern Spain, Fernando Garcia Dory, installed on the wall the plants brought from pastures of Boğatepe, along with lyrics of a local artistic verbal expression, bayatı or mani. Boğatepe Environment and Life Association (BÇYD) have been organizing workshops and training programmes on the traditional uses and scientific methods of identifying, collecting, and protecting edible, aromatic, and medicinal plants. This unique way of combining words and pictorial representations of plants was dedicated to the villagers and depicted their relationship with the plants in their pastures.
I had encountered the bayatı written on the wall in Boğatepe village at around the same time when I heard Yalçın Emmi telling and singing it in the village. As a respected elder of the village and a grocery store owner, he featured in a short video which was made in August 2022 in Boğatepe, and which was shown in the same room of the Biennial exhibition in İstanbul. He was happy to convey these songs that were usually dedicated to love but always carrying delicate expressions about the singer’s surroundings, including animals, pastures, food, seeds, or climatic conditions.
This article is from PASTRES, a research programme that aims to learn from pastoralists about responding to uncertainty and resilience, with lessons for global challenges. PASTRES is co-hosted by IDS.
