Doga Cakmakci

The House of O explores HUMAN as a biologically and sociologically engineered ideal: a construct, a commodity, an artificial heteropatriarchal industrial product; made of flesh, yet programmed and categorised by society—designed to generate capital.

The name of the work,The House of O, comes from the only third-person pronoun in Turkish: O. Unlike most Western languages, Turkish doesn’t employ gendered pronouns; O, a genderless pronoun, has always existed outside Western hegemonic structures—used for all, encompassing he, she, it, living or non-living beings. Drawing from personal experiences and theoretical inquiry, the work focuses on childhood, gender, and sexuality, exposing the underlying mechanisms that maintain and re-establish heteropatriarchal relations.

The work employs cuteness to become a Trojan Horse to deliver and spread queer agenda, through scanned images of various toys, an essay film (Phantasmagoria of the Self: A joyful death is a birth of Other), and brutally honest baby garments. The House of O materializes the voice of O, expressing the frustration and rejection towards the established heteropatriarchal normality; disturbing the polished fantasy of innocence and purity while remaining (a)cute enough to charm and disarm. What, then, might emerge when cuteness is not used to tame, but to disorient?