‘The Three Graces:· is a three-channel video of three Turkish women who have
re-located to Houston. Texas due to their husbands
employment. It is a set of portraits of these women singing traditional Turkish folk songs. and lullabies in their homes and surrounding areas. The images are spliced with panoramic landscape
shots of Texas and nature shots of the Brazos River. which is the longest river in Texas and also located near the women’s homes-they come from secular Turkish backgrounds and have integrated into the Texas landscape having lived there for over ten years. Inspired by Yesim Ustaoglu’s films where her characters are stuck between the past and present in a society with cultural
amnesia -the women in the video are portrayed through the act of singing these traditional songs of loss and memorialization. which at first evokes a sense of nostalgia. but is neutralized
with the performative awkwardness of the songs repeated in a Texas landscape.