Memoirs in My Suitcase

The exhibition which tells the 60 year-old migration journey of Turkish diaspora collected the personal and mutual stories, experiences worth a lifetime, photographs and symbolic objects of workers.

Starting point of the exhibition was the shared fate of people, who migrated for their wedding expenses, or for buying a tractor, or to send money back home. Letters, tapes, photos indicating the longing of home and loved ones and objects tied to migrating were the pillars of this exhibition. Thematic units and graphics of the concept were designed accordingly to the word “diaspora”, meaning to disperse, to scatter across. The exhibition was designed harmonious with the memoirs gathered from DiasporaTürk collection and migrant families.

With the exhibition held between December 10, 2019 and May 31, 2020 in Pitt Rivers Museum of University of Oxford; the meetings also helped to raise awareness for the arduous journeys started with wooden suitcases in Sirkeci Railway Station in the 1960s.