2023-2024
Cyanotype Prints/Public Art-Mural Installation at Arts Council Of Indianapolis until December 2025
Syzygy demonstrates microscopic details of internal body parts intertwined with a major celestial event, the solar eclipse, exploring the profound impact of eclipses on human existence. The blue hues of the cyanotype prints refer to the eclipse's mystical quality, merging the personal and cosmic within the artwork. The term "Syzygy" refers to the alignment or straight-line configuration of three celestial bodies in a gravitational system, such as the Sun, Earth, and Moon. Additionally, "syzygy" can be more broadly used to refer to any alignment or conjunction of elements.
Beyond their astronomical significance, eclipses are believed to exert a powerful influence on us physically and mentally. The intense energies generated during these celestial alignments are thought to resonate with our inner selves, stirring emotions and influencing the course of our lives. "Syzygy" thus serves as a visual meditation on the interconnectedness of personal and cosmic energies, inviting viewers to contemplate the subtle yet transformative effects eclipses can have on our individual journeys.
For the Sidewalk Galleries Program, which reproduces Indianapolis-based visual artists’ works as vinyl murals around the city on storefronts, the cyanotype prints were digitized and installed as a triptych mural on the windows of the Arts Council Of Indianapolis in Indianapolis, Indiana. The mural will be showcased until December 2025.
2023-Ongoing
Archival Inkjet Prints
36x24 inches
Hand In Hand is a multi-layered work exploring my ancestors and how our stories are connected. This exhibition is a personal investigation of transformation through migration. It delves into how my ancestors’ immigration has created a cycle of repetition in the family story through family archives, found images, and cyanotype prints. As an immigrant who migrated from Turkey to the United States in 2018, I naturally started to pay more attention to the meaning of being an immigrant and to the cycle of immigration, which was not acknowledged a lot in our family. My great-grandparents migrated to Turkey from Bosnia and Herzegovina during the 1910s. Although I have some information about these experiences, the stories still have gaps. Investigating my family's experiences helps make sense of my identity: how migration has shaped my life decisions.
I create a personal history record by imagining the past stories with the present and filling in the blanks through my spiritual perspective to achieve a sense of completeness. Combining family portraits with cyanotype prints produced from found slides showing microscopic views of human body parts (such as blood cells, nerve cells, and uterus), I propose that we embody the experience of our ancestors, whether we know their stories or not. The found street photos show the city of Sarajevo, where my ancestors are from. Erasing the people on the streets with rough gestures and turning the images into black and white, I depict the feeling of the aftermath of a city where a lot of their locals left and immigrated. During the time my family immigrated, approximately 3.5 million Bosnian Muslims left either for Turkey or the United States.
2021
Cyanotype/Inkjet Prints
18x24 inches
Below And Beyond is experimental abstractions of the images of tree roots made with the cyanotype technique. It is based on my readings around cosmic awareness, coexistence, connection, and taking root, inspired by my nature walks and bodily disconnectedness with family and friends during the first year of the pandemic. They are visual explorations of my aim to be rooted, to understand where my roots are as an immigrant and how one perceives the concept of roots through nature. Reserving center stage for trees that could be considered carriers of ecological memory and their roots that preserve their consciousness, the series refers to the perpetual cycle and interconnectedness of life, physically and spiritually.
The prints, produced initially as cyanotypes, symbolize the consciousness and memory that emanates from the earth through being connected and interdependent. Roots represent physical connectedness but also past, present, and future connectedness. Images that resemble cells magnified under a microscope represent a close-up look at the connections and network systems that the individual feeds on and the macro view of the planet that we exist on by looking underneath the surface. They remind us that the roots, evoking a sense of belonging, are connected to a shared system, to the constant flow in nature.
2021
Cyanotype/Inkjet Prints
18x24 inches
Signals And Exchanges is an abstraction of images of intertwined twigs made with the cyanotype technique. Inspired by my nature walks and bodily disconnectedness from family and friends during the first year of the pandemic, the series looks at connectedness as a social coping mechanism. Realizing that coexistence is one of the crucial survival needs during the lockdowns, the images represent the communication methods and support systems between individuals physically and digitally. Close-up images of these fragile holdings cut out as ambiguous shapes indicate these connections as unique organisms, subject to change within the flow of nature.
2021
Digital Video With Sound
8' 22''
Fragility of Coexistence is based on my fascination with a connecting branch that I encountered during the pandemic on one of my nature walks. Inspired by this scene where the branches of two adjacent trees are joined together to form a single unit embracing one another, I invited people to participate in my video work with their performances with a call on social media. Sending brief documentation of the scene as a video, I asked the participants to watch and perform it with their hands and arms with a loved one in front of a camera by improvising. This gesture of uniting, called inosculation in botanical science, was performed by guest figures. Resulting in a performative video, the movement of the arms reaching out toward one another created a collective dance. The video transformed the need for contact, to touch, which many of us crave during these times of separation, into poetic motion.