Memoire

-150 words-

My latest works are mostly about my memories, my memories from the past and the future. Mainly I record things that I want to remember, I draw the past I’d already lived with my own alterations and the future that I want to live through imagining it. 

I also love quotes and asking questions. I love to combine graphic elements with texts. Text-Art is another inspiration for me because I believe I communicate better via words.

Lately, I am inspired by J.L. Borges and Olivia Laing. Borges is, as already well-known, famous with his nondestructive short stories. Olivia Laing is a writer and cultural critic. I read her book “The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone” and the main scope of her is to question how we live without connecting another human being. She is searching for examples through art criticism.

Keywords: narrative, not forgetting, remembering, personal memory, text art, past, future.

-300 words-

I am defining my works as personal narratives and my basic motivation is to not forget, having personal documentation in my non-linear memories.

Using words and quotes in my drawings is a way of speaking with the audience for me. My illustration style is a bit childish and that gives me room for imagination and creating “magical realistic” spaces.

Borges is a big inspiration because he is very famous with his infinite loops and labyrinths. He is also writing about labyrinths of the memory and consequences of remembering. According to him, we should forget to have more space to make new memories. Not forgetting is a kind of curse, infinite memory is damnation but, I feel almost the opposite. If I forget, I will be lost, my identity will disperse, and I am coming into existence with my memories.

My works are not autobiographic, these are personal narratives. Also, Olivia Laing is tracing some personal narratives of artists like Edward Hopper, David Wojnarowicz, Henry Darger. All artists have some common backgrounds, like abusive childhood, urban loneliness, living in an economic crisis. She ends her book by saying;

“Loneliness is personal, and it is also political. Loneliness is collective“ and 

“of late capitalism, we are fed the notion that all difficult feelings - depression, anxiety, loneliness, rage - are simply a consequence of unsettled chemistry, a problem to be fixed, rather than a response to structural injustice.”

We have common anger to the capitalist system and neoliberal politics that defamiliarizes us to each other and also detachs us. Not forgetting is a way to preserve the connections that I made during my lifetime. In this context, I am still asking the question that why we are sometimes unable to remember events, places and objects? Obviously, in my opinion, it is related to modernism, the great speed that we live in, unmemorable non-places. The shortening of the life cycle of consumer goods leads us to a cultural change. The average life of people is prolonged while the average life of products, objects and buildings is shortened and this leads to cultural amnesia both in terms of personal memory and cultural memory. Also Edward Said is telling his memoirs in his book "Out of Place", he feels dislocated and struggles with a confused identity.

My motivation is to not forget fundamentally to preserve my identity, and not forgeting isn't opposite of "remembering". Actually, we can take forgetting and remembering like a memorial cycle. I can say I am trying to trace my own identity through my roots, my own experiences and memories in the political and personal context that I live in.