IMMIGRATION AND IDENTITY-2

Inspiring mostly by Nermin Saybaşılı's Borders and Ghosts: Migratory Hauntings in Visual Culture, I would like to explore and interpret how living as an immigrant, willingly or unwillingly, affects individual identity. Dividing in two solo exhibitions and some composite exhibitions, I am planning to show my paintings, collages, installations, 2D and 3D animation videos. I would like to present a different perspective, through art, against people who dream of emigrating with the hope of a better life, on the other hand, have a prejudiced and exclusionary attitude towards immigrants.

IMMIGRATION AND IDENTITY-1: Independent Shadows

The disappointments and longings of immigrants, who are generally seen as "others" or “uncanny guests”, affect their sense of belonging and identity. Identities are transformed and hybridized in cross-cultural crossovers. Navigating through the network of identities and alienating from their mother tongues leads to the formation of mosaic identities. Then, it's getting harder to say “us”. “Go or stay” is always a question mark. Open suitcases full of disappointments are always on the doorstep. Lifetimes are always temporary. Immigrants are lost in their own shadows, longing for the people they can no longer see and expect to see one day. In the mood of mourning and melancholy, they feel they are nowhere. They are like independent shadows.

SUBCONSCIOUS

In the exhibition consisting of 25 digital works, the artist wanted to express the expression of her own subconscious. Each digital work has been created by blending works produced with different techniques such as watercolor, photography, drawing, which are the accumulation of years, in the photoshop program. Each of these works is an expressive description of the changes in the artist's inner world. Due to the nature of the subconscious mind, it does not contain a certain limit of expression.

MEETING THE SELF

Inspired by Frederic Gros' A Philosophy of Walking, Laozi's Tao te Ching, and Martin Heidegger, she has realized that walking is also related to finding one's self. Based on the philosophy of walking, she held her solo painting exhibition named "Meeting the Self" in 2022. In her paintings, she tried to show the body not as a phenomenon, but as a body becoming, flow and continuity. The figures in her paintings are independent of space, non-objective, free and integrated with time, both alone and anonymous. The one, who seeks the self while trying to escape from the self, is at peace in this flow. The colors do not show the reality, but the traces of the snapshots in the flow.

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HYBRID BODIES

In the era of virtual media and social distance, being in the rhythm of nature, taking better care of it, leaving your soul to the flow of nature can be a healing power more than ever. Also influenced by the concepts of posthumanism and hybrid body, she integrated her drawings and watercolor works into her digital artworks for her solo digital exhibition “Hybrid Bodies” in 2022. As a matter of fact, the hybridization of the body with animal and plant forms or the transformation of machine parts into parts of the body have become one of the prominent interdisciplinary research topics in the contemporary art environment.

THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF THE SUBJECT

She inspired by the book "Inconsistencies" of Marcus Steinweg for her solo painting exhibition "The Impossibility of the Subject". According to Steinweg, the subject should move away from thinking according to the generally accepted but contradictory reality. In order to be a subject, a person must understand the self, transcend the own limits and even go beyond the self in order to understand the self. The subject is experiencing a journey to the self. The subject's ability to reach the end of this journey depends on discovering and destabilizing the own inconsistencies.

DREAM OF WATER

After being invited to the "Water for Life" international art exhibition to be held at the Niagara Falls History Museum, she organized a solo painting exhibition in 2017 on the water theme she focused on. By likening the variable, versatile, fluid, fertile, flooding feature of water that can absorb and throw out everything, to the mood of the woman, she depicts the female figure with the oval form in the waves of the sea or the drops of the water.

IN THE RHYTHM OF LOVE

There are some similarities between the concepts of dance and magic in ancient Turks. The dance of two people evokes feelings of intimacy and passion, for a short time. Couples watch each other throughout the dance. Dance creates love, nurtures it, but cannot sustain it forever. According to Eric Fromm, the common problem of love and art is whether they are both illusions. Dance is like a state of love, both illusion and fascination, and mutual care, devotion, and passion.

WOMAN AND IDENTITY

Shining under the moon light

Sun pales beside her

Embracing the cities

No longer suffering in your spirit

No longer desires with paradoxes

Let her know why she is alive.