Istanbul

Şeytan Tüyü

Şeytan Tüyü was the first major body of work to emerge from my engagement with the fragments attributed to the fourteenth-century artist and storyteller Siyah Kalem. First encountered at the Royal Academy exhibition, Turks: A Journey of a Thousand Years, 600–1600 in 2005 and revisited during a residency in Istanbul in 2008, these enigmatic images became the starting point for an extended exploration of painting, installation and cultural memory.

Developed over more than a decade, the project evolved alongside my experience of living and working in Istanbul. Walking the city, observing its surfaces and becoming immersed in its everyday life, I began to use the figures attributed to Siyah Kalem as vessels through which contemporary experience could be explored. Graffiti, political stencils, architectural details, urban textures and accumulated traces were gathered, layered and reassembled within the forms of demons, travellers and wandering performers.

Although the project originated during my time in Istanbul in 2008, it was during a residency at Halka Sanat Projesi in Kadıköy that many of its ideas finally came together. The residency provided the opportunity to resolve and exhibit the work, culminating in the 2019 exhibition Şeytan Tüyü, which brought together years of experimentation, observation and reflection.

Working between past and present, the paintings allow contemporary Istanbul to inhabit historical images, creating a dialogue between cultural memory, personal experience and the constantly changing surface of the city.