16/04/2020 | Writer: Aslı Alpar

We talked with Melis Berk, the illustrator of "İyileşme Çizimleri/Recovery Drawings", about their drawings, violence, and survival.

The drawings that heal Kaos GL - News Portal for LGBTI+

Have you heard of "İyileşme Çizimleri/Recovery Drawings"? This account on Instagram, titled Recovery Drawings, describes itself as "queer, vegan and feminist drawings on the sexual, emotional and physical violence recovery".

"Where are your corporate sexual violence policies?" they ask, they remind of a vital point "I'm not just my history of violence" and say "I'm alive" in a nutshell. We met online with Melis Berk, the illustrator of İyileşme Çizimleri/Recovery Drawings; we talked about their drawings, violence, and survival.

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I’m not just my violence history

Melis Berk says, "I've survived, and I want other people to see these drawings and survive." Let's leave it to them and their drawings.

How long have you been drawing?

Actually, I've been drawing before. I think when I was 14, I realized I could paint with my menstrual blood, and I started painting with my menstrual blood. For a few years, I drew people that didn't have faces every month with blood. But after a while, it became exhausting because I couldn't find an easy way to collect menstrual blood, and I was getting stuck in the house during my menstruation. That's why I took a break.

However, I attended the workshop "Masculinity in Caricature, Caricature of Masculinity" at the 2nd International Symposium on Men and Masculinity, and left with excitement for I could draw again.

I've been taking a painting class at the university for a while too.

What do you study?

I'm in the third year of the psychology program at Boğaziçi University. We are drawing replicas in the painting classes.

“It's not easy to talk about something you're angry about"

How did you come out with the Recovery Drawings?

It was a time when I was bored a lot. When I felt lonely because of the violence I was experiencing, when no one believed me, I was asking Google questions about survival from violence, I was looking at the slogans and banners that came out, none of them were in Turkish. I realized that there is a serious gap in this area, that the images that will strengthen the survivors will be dearly valuable to the survivor.

On the other hand, I had been trying to talk about abuse and violence for a long time, but I didn't know how, because I was angry and it's not easy to talk about something you're angry about. A line I encountered on an Instagram page I followed said: "I want more normalized conversations around self-care, recovery, therapy, surviving sexual abuse, disordered eating issues, living with HIV and how to stop stigmatizing sexual and reproductive health." I think this image encouraged me to produce the Recovery Drawings. 

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Work: Hannah Daisy

So my first drawing came about.

What was your first drawing?

It was giving the message of ‘believe the survivor’.

What does believing the survivor changes for the survivor?

It depends, especially on the age that the person exposed to violence and type of violence, but violence becomes a very important part of life and can disrupt and redo many things in our lives with us. And when someone doesn't believe us, it's the same as rejecting our existence. Believing is to accept that I exist.

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My sexual orientation is not related to my history of abuse

Your drawings are not just about humans, you have drawings about the violence against non-human animals too…

Yes, I have other works in this field too, I will share them in time.

What will we see?

I have a line against animal experiments, I didn't know how common animal experiments were before I started college, so I wanted to go to a university that doesn't experiment on animals, but I saw that there wasn't any. Then I read the regulation of the ethics committees, which was describing the violence as follows, "we will hurt them but not too much, we will kill if we hurt too much." Something like this is not an acceptable definition for me, as a survivor of violence.

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My friends are not for sale

Anyway, animal experiments are being carried out in the Boğaziçi, on quails and mice. I have a mouse in my house that was rescued from the experiment, named As Halep. During this period, I had to take a class from a lecturer who was experimenting on animals. It was a big dilemma for me.

In a nutshell, mice are seen as one of the most worthless species in the experimental species, I want to draw them. On the other hand, I try to draw about not eating animals.

What kind of attention do your drawings attract?

What I wanted to do when I started drawing was exactly this: My worst period of violence was 14-20 years old, my adolescence. It was a very dark time, and if I had met such drawings at the time, it would have been a savior for me. I've survived, and I want other people to see these drawings and strengthen themselves and survive.

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I’m not apart from the rest of the world

The reactions to my work are in accordance with this. The message of a follower who says they are in a bad time, but these lines are good for them, makes me think that the drawings are working. I want these drawings to heal me while healing the others.

Finally, what do you want to say to survivors of violence?

As a survivor of violence, I've really suffered a lot. No one asked me what I was going through, what I expected, what I wanted.

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I’m recovering from sexual abuse / You can recover too

That's what I want to ask people with these drawings. Let them know that there is so much we can do about it and they won't feel alone forever... We are creating areas where we can somehow reach each other, and we will continue to do so.

Translation: Yiğit E. Korkmaz


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