DEMIRKAPI COLLECTIVE ARTISTS
Gökhan Esener focuses on rendering visible the instinctual traces of surreal therianthropic beings—encountered in numerous prehistoric civilizations—that remain hidden within contemporary human beings. Through human-animal hybrid therianthropic creatures, he expresses the imagery of primitive humanity concealed deep beneath the mask of civilization. Esener, who generates unreal images through artificial intelligence by analyzing the entirety of humanity’s recorded data, does not limit his mode of expression to this alone. He then slowly and layer by layer processes his images—which create the perception of optical reality—using ancient photographic techniques, transforming them into unique contemporary icons.
Reşit Şimşek traces the motifs, colors, and scents rooted in his own geographical origins, seeking to perceive and understand what lies beyond the visible. In light of the traces he discovers, he questions past dialogues and conflicts, as well as differences, entering into a search for meaning. Even if they do not—or cannot—exist in reality, he metaphorically proposes new forms of dialogue and creates new encounters. He transforms his own artistic production into a peaceful practice of action, with a reflex akin to the processes of traditional craftsmanship from past times.
Aksu Günay, on the one hand, observes Plato’s cave through a pinhole, attempting to understand and interpret its reality; on the other hand, she visualizes the tragedies of the metropolitan individual through wide-angle compositions. She questions the confinement, oppression, and negation of the body amid massive concrete structures, seeking and visualizing new narrative languages on the optical plane.
Samet Yılık, with an awareness that his own body is part of nature, focuses on the state of being intertwined with and becoming identical to nature, developing new narrative methods through artistic sensitivity. While producing his work in the depths of nature as a performative practice, he in fact establishes a balance between nature and himself.
Feyza Nur Veziroğlu, who struggled for many years with psychological eating disorders, creates a field of confrontation between her body and its projection by observing herself through the optical eye of the camera. Through this external gaze, she watches herself and, in doing so, confronts her physical body as well as the psychological and social wounds opened by this condition. She frees herself from the weight of the body and confines it to the realm of imagination to which it belongs. To the extent that she is able to look from the outside, she analyzes and confronts her subjective condition. Her withdrawal from social life, her disappearance, is likened not to vanishing into darkness, but to disappearing within light and brightness—for light itself is life.
Ercan Güleryüz, who was compelled to encounter the phenomenon of migration firsthand in his childhood, examines migration and his transformation between two different cultures by placing himself and his immediate circle at the center. After many years, Güleryüz once again comes face to face with the phenomenon of migration. Likening migration to a “rebirth,” he analyzes the issue from multiple perspectives while also proposing new narrative languages with a genuinely renewed and refreshed point of view.