In her exhibition Stonehead, Raziye Kubat opens up for discussion certain symptoms born of these philosophical folds, through the images she evokes and interacts with. Engaging once more in dialogue with these quiet existents that permeate all aspects of thought and narrative, Kubat turns her focus to the presence of another mind, another spirit, from within other worlds. She exposes the fractures of a path walked without listening to stone, without leaning on soil.
Stonehead: What an Awry Gaze Makes Us Think
According to legend, after witnessing the killing of a bird, Cain crushed Abel’s head with a stone—thus leaving behind not only the first act of murder but also humanity’s first weapon. Later, Cain also learned from a bird, a crow, the grace of the earth’s covering and concealing power. And so, civilization—caught between stone and soil—was entrusted to us.
Art is, in part, a story of stone and soil. So too are philosophy, mythology, and the theological narratives briefly referenced in the opening quote. Looking back, there seems to be no fold of thought untouched by stone or soil. Plato likened the fixed and immutable to stone, seeing it as a shadow of the ideal—resistant to change, persistent in form. Aristotle regarded stone and earth as two of the four fundamental elements, essential to both physics and metaphysics. In The Origin of the Work of Art, Heidegger associated the concept of the “earth” (Erde) with stone and soil—a ground upon which human life stands, works, and shapes its existence. In art, stone becomes not only material but also a representation of how we relate to the world.
In her exhibition Stonehead, Raziye Kubat opens up for discussion certain symptoms born of these philosophical folds, through the images she evokes and interacts with. Engaging once more in dialogue with these quiet existents that permeate all aspects of thought and narrative, Kubat turns her focus to the presence of another mind, another spirit, from within other worlds. She exposes the fractures of a path walked without listening to stone, without leaning on soil. These plural elements that converge with stone and earth bring to mind Slavoj Žižek’s significant concept: looking awry. Inspired by Lacan’s “real,” Žižek described an unbridgeable gap—a misalignment—between subject and world. This misalignment implies that the subject’s (human’s) understanding of the world will always remain incomplete. Kubat situates herself in this void and absence, translating the lack inscribed in stone, soil, plant, and animal toward the human subject. She reveals a rupture in the human’s dominant position across all discourses—a rupture arising from other beings’ closedness toward us, from humanity’s distance from understanding. Looking awry doesn’t critique a specific idea, but rather the very framework that contains it. Kubat doesn’t attack the gaze that belittles stone’s silent and inanimate world; instead, she draws attention to the edges of the noisy, animate one.
Are the stones before us severed sacrificial heads? Symptoms of a helpless, voiceless universe—or signs of an entirely different wisdom? Raziye Kubat is acutely aware of this murky and enigmatic world that includes animals and plants. The “outside” of the human, for her, is not a lack but an excess. Stones speak, soil behaves wisely, trees ask questions, and animals teach. What is lacking is, in fact, abundant. This becomes a theory of power, of spirit, within Kubat’s plastic language—a kind of shamanic intervention.
There is no attempt here to represent or mediate the language of stone, soil, or animal. The stones she befriends, those she rests her spirit upon, are ones that speak directly to her. They are not found by chance or through resemblance. Rather, the stones and Kubat have sought, called out, and met each other. These are not just any stones, but singularities that reveal themselves to the artist—summoning dialogue. The world of the stone, typically closed to humans—what Heidegger called “beings deprived of world”—begins to open itself to Kubat’s realm. Her relationship with nature, stone, soil, plants, and animals stems from personal experience and accumulation over time.
In short, these are not representations of nature in the conventional sense—nor is Kubat interested in such representations. Her work departs from the comfort of a plastic ecological reflex and moves toward a fully personalized eco-narration. One might say it portrays not a physical nature, but one chemically imagined. The spiritual presence of the artist blends with that of nature. This is not randomness, nor a sudden gleam of nature’s unknown face flashing and disappearing. Nor is it a romanticized bourgeois yearning for rural life. This agreement traces back to something far older: the artist’s childhood. The relationship began there. At times, her drawings and images directly hand us the lines of a child: a simple hill, a few trees in rows, a clear moon, or crude, inverted words evoking a pre-literate innocence—“Where is Tarık now?”—scrawled in the soil with trash, barely legible...
Images without perspective, depth, or a sense of three-dimensional space: simply, the vision of a child.
This is where Kubat’s critical point begins to emerge: the way childhood functions. Here, childhood is not a traumatic flashback or return, but a leap forward—a rejection of the societal contract. And at precisely this moment, a gaze that could only belong to a child enters the scene: the awry gaze. A proposal to renegotiate. To abandon the symbolic regime of adulthood and mature logic. To create new colors, new atmospheres. To leave behind social construction and embrace an eco-shamanic accord. A departure from mastery, dominance, and transcendence. In Georges Bataille’s terms, a desire for immediacy and immanence. An effort to end the subject-object divide, while preserving difference. To invalidate the given: Let’s sit down again, talk again. I’ve returned to the place you abandoned me at age five.
In the end, neither Kubat is still “human” nor is stone still “stone” (where stone symbolizes all non-human beings). It’s an audacious act to erase the boundary between human and nature. And once this boundary is erased—once the human phenomenon is questioned—nature too begins to appear suspicious in the images. As the human eye and perception are in constant construction, so too must the “other”—nature—alter its image, color, and form accordingly. Thus, the artist avoids adopting a purely critical voice and instead asserts the gaze of the child. Might we not say that at some age we are closest to the animal? Or that every child is born a shaman? Scribbling into soil, playing with stones...
That is why Kubat’s colors never attempt to portray classical representations of nature. She seeks another kind of nature: where tree is no longer tree, animal no longer animal, stone no longer stone—all becoming earth.
As mentioned at the beginning, stone and soil—these two primordial substances—were not only witnesses but agents of the first crime, and they continue to dominate human narrative. Some stories even suggest that the first knowledge granted to Adam was the knowledge of stone, which would make stone one of the earliest cognitive materials. In that sense, Stonehead could be seen not as a portrayal of a closed subject but as an exercise in invoking the knowledge of stone—thinking through realms that are closed to the human.
In conclusion, it’s worth emphasizing that in her journey with stone and soil, Kubat recalls Carl Gustav Jung’s archetypal framework. For Jung, stone and soil function as key archetypes within the collective unconscious. Stone represents endurance, spiritual equilibrium, permanence, and the journey of self-discovery, while soil—Gaia, as a matriarchal symbol—represents the source of life, fertility, and the deep connection to origins and belonging. This is why the canvases are coated in earth—because a plural mode of being can only emerge from both above and beneath the soil.
— M. Wenda Koyuncu
