Cihad

Root

It is a photography project that I made between 2009-2012. There are also objects which I have found from ruined places such as abandoned villages. It is about my roots. Before this project I have never been to in these places. My grandfather moved from this place to Istanbul to work and political reasons.

There is an Dutch artist call Zehra Guveli. I have impressed her works a lot at the beginning. She also did same thing to follow her grandfather's footsteps and combined photos, which is taken by her father.

This project is one of my early works. I was believing if you want to create a strong work you need to start from your root, your homeland, yourself. Because when you know yourself well, you can work about other things. I also believe your environment gives shape you and at the same time you give shape your environment. That was the other reason I did this project to explore my environment staring from my roots.

Fictionalized Illusion

It is an archive and photography project that I made in 2013. It is combining of archive and photos taken by my mobile phone. It is about Turkish history which is full of military coups around eight.

I have been collecting archive photos, old letters, dia and negative films from flea markets in Istanbul for a long time.. I was planning to present them in fiction way not show them as a documentary. Some think archive is useless garbage and for some it becomes a worthy source of inspiration. Archive can become a collection of interesting and artistic documents. I read a story from newspaper colourful stairs in Istanbul. In 2013 one turkish citizen painted around 500 stairs in various colour in Cihagir. After two days state painted stairs into grey. It was the point starting point for me.

There is also relation between with this project and Root. When I started to dig my history/Roots I have reached my grandfather moved to Istanbul because of political reasons. In 1923 Turkish republic was foundation after Ottoman Empire. They made social and religious reforms and there was no room for who is different. Although there are more than seven nations in Turkey, they imposed people there is just "one nation, one flag, on language". It was the quote of them. I decided to work on our history that relevant to archive which I have collected.

Attractive Reality

What

It is a video, photography and installation project that I started in beginning of 2014. I am still working on it. Basically context of this project involve reality, dream, imagination and time. There are few headlines

• Producing of reality
• Flexibility of time
• Deceptiveness of perspective
• Digitalization of image

How

I was reading about reality-time-dream for a while from Baudrillard, Ibn Arabi, Ibn Heysem. I quite impressed from these writers the way of to deal with reality-imaginary-dream. Two of them lived in 11th century.