Vandalina: Ankara’s new street art collective

A new street art project, Vandalina, is taking to the streets of the capital city with stickers and posters. Team raises awarness to social issues

If you are a subway commuter in Ankara, you might have encountered stickers placed haphazardly in the trains, over the glass doors, and across the stations. They are not bright in color. In fact, most of them are black and white, with occasional red splattered on.

What is striking is the messages screamed through these stickers. Below a giant, red 5 is written, “Five women are killed each day in this country” over one of the stickers. On another one with the same hair-raising statistic, “Your mother, your sister, your daughter, your lover, your friend,” is written in a blurry font.

There are over 10 variations of these stickers with the same message directing the attention of the passer-by to the increasing number of women’s murders. “Research shows that women’s murders have increased 1,400 percent in seven years,” one of the members of Vandalina, the street art collective responsible for this sticky show across the capital city, told the Hürriyet Daily News.

Vandalina, a fresh street art collective initiated by a small group of friends in Ankara, hopes to raise awareness of social issues through the use of alternative media, stickers and posters being the initial choice. The name is a play on the Turkish word for tangerine, mandalina. “We actually wanted to be connected to the idea of vandalism when selecting our name,” said the member, the “Vandalinist.”

Click here for full article (Hürriyet Daily News)

KÜF Project brings subversive street art to Ankara

A urinal over the ugly tiles of one of Ankara's underpasses, 'No Parking' signs turned into peace signs, sidewalk barriers transformed into Pac-Man's 'pac-dots' - all are the work of Ankara's street art collective, the KÜF Project. The Hürriyet Daily News talks to members of the movement that makes Turkey's capital city a little more colorful each day

There were more smiles than usual in Ankara when the round sidewalk barriers on Cinnah Street, one of the capital’s main roads, turned into yellow “pac-dots” from the Pac-Man video game. Cut outs of Pac-Man and his nemesis Blinky face off over a line of dots that Pac-Man surely would like to gobble right up.

The guerilla installation was the work of Ankara’s collective street art movement, the KÜF Project, which has also turned “No Parking” signs into peace signs and “No Entry” street signs into the jerseys of the Turkish national football team, replicating the 4-4-2 formation of the team in the match against Bosnia in 2009, which led Turkey to be disqualified from the World Cup.

The idea, the group says in its manifesto, is “not to pollute the streets,” but “to color them with dormant energy.”

Click here for full article (Hürriyet Daily News)