As a migrant artist, can you explain how migrating from Taipei to Berlin affected your art? What kind of struggles construct your artistic identity in Berlin?
My artwork has evolved along with my personal growth, Taipei has given me enough comfort to ground me, and the diversity of Berlin has inspired me to take a more intense stylistic journey.
What were the emotions and feelings that initially encouraged you to practice your art? Why did you choose drawing as the medium? How do you feel while drawing? How do you reflect this in your art?
I was not very good at socializing when I was a child. I always drew quietly somewhere alone. By drawing, I created stories in the imaginary world and presented them on paper. It made my young mind calm, joyful, and not alone.
As for why I chose drawing as the medium, I think it feels very steady and stable… I always describe my creative process as weaving, stacking lines layer by layer, which gives me a lot of sense of security.
One thing I find very interesting is that I often meditate during the drawing process, as if my physical body is working, but my consciousness is traveling in different dimensions. I visualize the messages I received, then sketch them down, so each piece of work is a small journey for me.
How do you describe the aesthetic relationship between Berlin, drawing, and yourself?
Berlin has given me a broader vision, taking my wild and unconstrained creations further, to messier places. At the same time, I am constantly discovering a new, different self.
Which artists did play essential roles in the formation of your artist identity? Which art movements did have a significant impact on your art?
I’m honestly very bad at remembering names… and I haven’t had any courses on fine art concepts or even art history.
If I had to say… I think surrealism influenced me the most, I love Dali’s pencil sketches and I’m also a big fan of Japanese manga artist Q Hayashida.
Can you tell us what inspires and drives you to do your art?
I feel that language is what limits each other’s ability to communicate, believe me, my Sun and Mercury are both in Libra, so communication is very important to me…but language creates many distinctions and all kinds of misunderstandings. I think that images are a gentle way of communication. Works can be appreciated, understood, shared, and discussed, and even stimulate imagination. This is the main force that drives me to continue drawing.
Three years ago, a few friends in Ankara could not fit into the house they were living in back then and then they started to search for a new space. Being aware of the beauty of collective production, these friends, who have already done amazing works, called themselves “Kiwina”.
Kiwina is a mixed workshop, its door is open to anyone who wants to produce. The range of materials and production tools is wide, but still run by people who are more into digital workshops than traditional workshops. Stages are set up for online concerts, shows and programs are being recorded and projection mapping works are carried out. They are being consulted for technical support by productive artists who wish to share their works. Most recently, at “Art Ankara”, they were demonstrating their digital and computer-aided works and the potential of these works to Ankara art community, as you would remember, we had a little getaway to Art Ankara in the last issue.
What else is going on in their workshop? They made us such a beautiful video for us to get to know them better. Be sure to watch, because our relationship with them will continue for a veeery long time.
Forgotten by the Day is a series formed by questioning the idea of identity in the mind between the mental states of dreams, and waking life. Mostly formed by portraits inspired by dream characters, it is a visual journey that explores these characters through personal experiences, by observing dreams of the self and the others, manipulating space and time by using tangible devices, altering the human body and its surroundings in waking life.
“A dream is a microscope through which we look at the hidden occurrences in our soul.”
How would you describe your work to someone who is not familiar?
By using real images and manipulating them, I produce a kind of work called “generative video art”. This approach, also called “Generative”, enables random selections from infinite results. In this way, I can reach the final state of the work by screening, which makes the process more exciting for me. In this sense, we can call my works “digital new media visuals based on trial and error”.
Can you share with us the main motives that are effective in the editing and construction process of your works?
I think this method I use serves my content well. My art can be considered postmodern in terms of technique and medium. My design aesthetic is influenced byde-constructivist architecture, glitch art, and op-art. Regarding the content and main motives of my art, I make spatial manipulations that can trigger discussions on the idea of infinity, and then I want to question our perception of time. Although we perceive otherwise, time has no beginning or end. Time is looped and endless, just like in my video art. My works go round and round in cyclical order, regardless of the presence of the audience. This consciously chosen approach helps me convey my art by just constantly reinterpreting the continuous ordinaries rather than being declarative. In this sense, the works of art can be pieces that exist on their own.
What is NFT and how does it work?
Non-Fungible Token (NFT), in its shortest definition, is a unique digital asset. In a sense, we can think of NFT’s as validating images, music, data, web pages, 3D objects, and similar data on the blockchain with smart contracts.In this sense, we can see a similarity between NFTs and collectors’ items. I liken them to the pokemon cards I used to love. There is data describing the features of the card on it, it has a visual. The card has no fixed monetary value and can change hands from person to person.
What role do you think NFT will play in the next generation of “collecting”?
NFT platforms create a more liberal market for collectors, making it easier for both the collector to reach the artist and the artist to the collector. It removes the local boundaries of artists and allows them to meet with other artists from many different parts of the world in common selections. In this way, I think it ensures that the collections are in diversity.
What are the reasons behind you preferring this platform as an artist?
The reason why I prefer digital art platforms and NFT as an artist is equal opportunity, I think this reason is common for most young artists like me. While the meeting of artists with their collectors in the conventional art market requires intermediary institutions; NFT digital art platforms can eliminate these bureaucratic stages and bring the artist together with the audience in the fastest way possible. This provides the opportunity for talented artists who are just starting out and who have not yet made their name to be heard, to show their work in a global way.
What kind of problems did you encounter with both your art and the NFT platform? What methods have you developed to overcome these problems?
The first surprise, especially for new beginner artists, will be transaction fees. When I researched why these transaction fees were given beyond the financial aspect of the work, I found that these fees were paid to crypto miners and that these miners were spending a lot of electricity by using powerful computers. This problem both made my conscience hurt and made me question the ecological effects of the existence of the system. Fortunately, not every network is harmful to the environment, and it doesn’t come with transaction fees. I’m trying to work with more such platforms.
What did you find on the way to this point? What do you hope to find for the future?
Until I got to this point in my NFT process, I still have a long way to go tho, though I’ve found that the art I make attracts, arouses curiosity, and is appreciated by people from different parts of the world with very different tastes and collections. I also witnessed the creation of an art community through digital art platforms. The digitalized artistic activity also enables global collaborations. NFTs are preparing our place in the virtual reality and game worlds, where we will be much more intertwined in the future. I believe that NFTs, the most talked about event in the art scene, will appear in many more areas that we cannot predict for now, and I look forward to where these areas will take us.
What have you learned from your mistakes so far? What advice do you have for those just starting out?
When I first entered the platforms, I had a hard time positioning myself as I was unsure of the asset and economic value of my work. It took some time to get used to this system, which does not work as in the art scene in Turkey. Retrospectively, I realize that I hurried up to sell my first works due to the excitement created by this new trend. But at the moment, I believe these processes should not be rushed and artists should be patient. I recommend to beginners thatthey should think about why and how they want to exist in this field, and not let the record sales shared on social media affect them emotionally.
One day, while hiking in the Alps I began to notice the stones beneath my feet.
The contrast between the shimmery black granite and the white limestone, their irregular shapes, the simplicity of its’ beauty and the complexity of their origin fascinated me. Each stone a small part of the enormous mountain range spread out into the distance. I found these remnants of such natural grandeur awe-inspiring and I was filled with new reverence and inspiration.
They are the memories, the thoughts, tiny recollections of the mountains’ history; the plates violently colliding beneath, the reckoning of an ice age, the powerful gracefulness of its formation, fully alive.
Yet it is just a stone…
But a stone that gives me a vision to express its’ spirit, its’ fragmented memories and the impressions I received when I was hiking on that mountain.
Can you describe the main components of the aesthetics you have been constructing through your painting? What kinds of artistic, cultural, and social inputs have fed your style so far?
I like to create an organic body of colors and shapes animated through dynamical, impulsive movements and more graphical, fine gestures. This body of textures, forms, and lines always end up evolving on its own, so that I become the tool of an energy that drives me. I think rhythm and vibration are a big component of my aesthetic, but also symbolic representation plays more a role in my work. From a young age, I wanted to create an aesthetic of my own, I had the conviction that it would bring me paradoxically closer to a certain form of universality. I really enjoy giving a form to an emotion, creating an archetype that is called by my unconscious. I like using the human figure as a recurrent pattern, muster because I think it has an endless source of expressivity.
When I recall the origin of my style, I think first of my familial background, both of my parents are figurative painters. I spent my childhood visiting ateliers and squats in the late 90s, in Paris they were passionate about all forms of figurative representation from the Christ on the cross, to Enki Bilal’s comics, Japanese mangas, Asian and African masks and marionettes. I was really touched by this and already as a child started to build my own style, mostly graphical.
I also have Amazigh roots, also called Berber by Europeans, an ancient indigenous folk present on all the North African territory that had an influence on my visual vocabulary.
Philosophy, anthropology, and more recently art therapy also have a strong influence on my style, the human condition and the plurality of her interpretation fascinates me as much as all kinds of spiritual and mythological representations that have been existing.
How would you describe the aesthetic relationship between Berlin, painting, and yourself?
I came to Berlin over 7 years ago. The energy and the aesthetic of the city were so different and refreshing from my hometown Paris, where the architectural heritage of the last centuries wasn’t destroyed by the war like in Berlin. Berlin with its newborn urban landscapes gave me a lot of inner freedom and stimulation to create. The open spaces, the charm of the industrial raw architecture meeting the plentifulness of green areas and the light of the East.
Berlin also gave me the physical space to paint on a larger scale. And of course, the Berlin scene with her variety of eccentric personalities chasing freedom of being and expression inspired me to fully embrace my individuality. Berlin is also the city where I gave birth and transformed as a woman, becoming a mother empowered my work and desire to go deeper in my painting practice.
Which painters do you think played important roles in the formation of your artist identity? Which art movements have had a significant impact on your art?
It all started with the old masters, I met in museums of all over Europe in my childhood observing Caravaggio, Da Vinci, Artemisia Gentileschi but also Schiele, Kokoschka, Goya, Hokusai, Bacon, Kahlo, Ousmane Sow, Bilal, the Surrealist all of those that invocated the human soul and condition with an innovative form transcending time and space. Also, art from other cultures and places had a big influence on my artistic construction.
The name speaks for itself and should be taken literally. This is an invitation! Is there anything in the picture making you flush? Anything in the picture related to shame for you? No? Great! It took me a while to get there – if I’m already there at all!
Personally, I see shame about hair, masturbation, and menstruation. It was the shame towards my menstrual blood that led me to make this painting.
I see the root to it in a thought I had long ago: “I have people licking me while I’m menstruating, but I don’t really have a clue what my menstrual blood actually tastes like, except for a few after-cunnilingus impressions when I got a kiss afterwards. And I remember a feeling of distastefulness coming up. And there it was: SHAME.
Fuck this! These people seem to accept my bodily fluid more than I do? I don’t want that! And then came the question: But how can I change that?
First Idea: By trying it, of course. So next time I got my period, I took out my menstrual cup, looked at it, dipped a finger in, and tasted it. Bloody, and ok actually. First step done. Later on, I accidentally found a webinar about menstrual blood that turned out to be full of ideas on how to get a better connection with it. One idea that caught me was: painting!
So I bought some droppers at the pharmacy to store the blood of each day separately, and some time later I did the first painting.
Fast forward to the prephase of “Fuck The Shame Away”: I made a couple paintings until I needed to produce more paint, and then an interesting feeling came up: I couldn’t wait to menstruate! And, surprisingly, I felt productive just by lying around and menstruating. I love this!
And while painting, there was a completely bloody mess on the floor that didn’t even bother me much. That is a development I was looking for!
The few things I used to create this painting are: paper, my blood (each day of one menstruation stored in a different container), water, and a brush. The variety in colors is due to the different shades from day to day, and to the amount of water it is mixed with. After painting, the colors changed a bit over time.
And for those who are wondering, it doesn’t smell – if I get really close and inhale deeply, I can catch a soilish smell.
After releasing our EP “Part-Time Punk” on Detriti Records, we feel more motivated than ever to play our music, make new tunes, and vibe with you people. So, we would like to have a tiny session with you to celebrate our EP.
While hoping to play for you in smokey, trashy bars and clubs, this time we invite you to a tiny online session in our Gazino in Wassertorstrasse, Berlin.
We would love to pass our warmest thanks to Kor for mastering our sound. Big thanks also go to Dolmus Magazine and NCOUNTERS for supporting us in this event. Without any of them, this event would not be possible.
As human beings, our consciousness has been in constant change since our birth and has never been fixed. Every living thing in nature experiences conscious and cognitive changes depending on internal and external factors and reacts to the outside world accordingly.
Since we live in society, the concept of mask reflects the effects of our individuality on us and on those around us. It has emerged from our consideration of our effects on things. We may not be able to reflect our feelings all the time and act in line with our wishes.
We wear masks when communicating with the outer world. This consciousness is in constant transformation and renewal with several changes in our society and social life. Every change can be understood as being born into a new consciousness. But these births are usually too small for us to notice instantaneously. They grow together over time and form a pattern. When we look at it detailed, we can observe the difference.
Our character, whom we hardly see throughout the film, is overwhelmed by the abstract and concrete masks in society. Although the antivirus mask he wears when he goes out helps him hide some facial expressions, he is quite overwhelmed by not being able to breathe properly. Simultaneously, he wears an abstract mask that is not just about mimics, which he is most overwhelmed by it.
The abstract and concrete masks our character wears overwhelms him. He realizes that the reason for these masks is not to live in nature, but to live in the city. There are no humans in nature, no viruses, no masks to wear. Realizing this, our character experiences a great inner distress and every moment he stays in the city begins to feel like torture to him.
In this part, the crisis has come to an end and the explosion, in other words, the escape has started. Approximately 1-minute story of escape from the city. 200 bpm dark and fast-paced music with a very fast tempo playing in the background.
The stress, anxiety, and all the chaos in our character’s head, -whose escape is over and reaches nature- has come to an end. Unlike other scenes, the tempo of this scene is very calm and peaceful. The audience takes a stroll through nature. Our character, who gets rid of his mask and returns to his essence, gets caught up in the flow for a while and becomes just an observer.
The audience also becomes the witness of this observation.
With a track by /KU8I/, accompanied by dance choreography by Sascha Kimel, and audio-reactive videography by Baris Pekcagliyan, the piece stresses existential myths alongside a dark-rhythmic groove.
