Anne Polashenski - Osman I With Tree Body Flimflam

Anne Polashenski

The setting is the Ottoman Empire and all of the Sultans have been stripped of their Kaftans. I have stolen these ornate robes, but from present day at the Picture Collection in the New York Public Library, and have created Turkish Delight, a series of mixed media works that addresses the status of women through dress. The Turkish Delight Flimflams, a series created after the Turkish Delight works, exhibit Ottoman Sultans dressed in female clothing, as their kaftans are now being worn by women and are unavailable to them. I use an eclectic range of rubber-stamp images of female garments – corsets, crinolines, ballerina costumes and the like - that interact with drawings of the Ottoman Sultans (primarily the heads) and painted patterns. These pieces move further into the realm of fantasy and absurdity than with other works. The male figures are locked into place by ornate Turkish patterns and are confronted by the absurdity of their dress. Are these Sultans trapped, or are they free? In regards to their dress, I leave it to the viewer to decide. How the figure is layered into my work on the other hand, displays an elaborate process of entrapment behind patterns, similar to the Cask of Amontillado, but far less gruesome.