Wapke Feenstra : Potato growers / patates yetiştiricileri

Wapke Feenstra together with the Turkish researcher and curator Kevser Guler learned about contemporary and traditional practices of three potato-grower families - Kara Family, Süt Family and Güven Family - in Cappadocia. While the Kara Family cannot continue their land based on traditional dry farming based on pigeon manure due to increasing dryness in the region, the Süt Family is constructing their irrigation system on land that was abandoned for two decades in relation to overproduction, the internationally traded potatoes from the Güven Family are stored in traditional natural storages. Even though the three families have different stories of local knowledge, industrialization, land-use and globalization, they share the feeling: ‘once a potato farmer, always a potato farmer’.
In the project, Wapke and Kevser experienced the daily life of these families and mutually created new imaginations of the rural concerning its relations with labour, agriculture, land, and soil.