Male circumcision, as a remark of a pre-adolescent child entering manhood, is being celebrated as a highly theatrical and public ceremony in Turkey. Circumcision, a ritual of loss, is the most widespread marker of masculinity that has practiced for thousand years and a traumatic one that is acted out and upon the male body. 

As a series of twelve stylized photographic tableau, ‘Whole’, expresses a man's rejection of circumcision and depicts an imagined ritual in which the foreskin is reattached to make the body whole again. The overall project is a psychological attempt to fill the absence caused by the cut and challenge the tyranny of blue, the color of manhood. While the overall imagery takes place in staged atmosphere of the ceremony hall that reminds constructiveness of gender, the character keeps projecting himself into other moments and places in order to redefine his relation to masculinity. The pruned tree, as project’s sub-narrative layer, represents an organic form that, in many cultures, is used as a metaphor of circumcision. Similar to the reverse journey of cut branches towards their origin, the pruned tree,

As a final installation form, all photographs will be will be exhibited in a single raw and be covered by a thin, white curtain that will stand four feet away from the images to make viewer experience the work in a dreamy passage.

Growing up watching classic Turkish melodramas (Yesilçam) that were aired over and over again on daytime television in the 1990s, their discolored imaginary world are always stuck in my memory. ‘Mommy’s Not Home’ is a video installation project that aims to convey the phantasy of that small kid, who is trying to keep his own mother figure at home, similarly to the female characters in those old melodramas.

Yesilçam melodramas have reflected, through the female figure, the Turkish modernization process and the perpetual tension caused by the desire for westernization. Just as is the case in the genre of the melodrama, in this work as well women are, on the one hand, positioned inside, i.e., within the home, while on the other they are passive characters who are nonetheless aware of their sexuality and that they are there for spectacle. As for the home, which, with its closed doors and drawn curtains, is, indeed, conceived as a claustrophobic space, it alludes to the continuity of the family as an institution and its domination over women.

Comprising a total of ten women’s videos and sets’ photographs, this work uses detailed 1:10 models of the actual Yesilçam film sets. The common element in all the sets is the staircase leading to an unknown destination; rather than a mere architectural form these become a vehicle for the women’s unavoidable transformation. The videos run in constant loop in which the women continue to deliver their roles with exaggerated gestures and mimics, the music – the sine qua non of melodrama – is included in the scene as if imposing moods on the spectator.

In this installation project, which is exhibited using CRT monitors placed side by side, television, on the one hand, becomes a representation of representation with this second plane it forms through the screening of a motion picture, and, on the other, lays emphasis on the claustrophobic world within which melodramas confine women.

As one of the controversial issues of today’s Turkish social and political scenes, the old concept of Cemaat, does not only refer to a specific religious community, but also to the highly collectivist structure of Turkish culture.

‘Cemaat’, is a project that departs from basic aesthetics of Miniature art, the only type of painting that is allowed in Ottoman art and portrays common urban imageries from Turkey. Unlike the traditional Miniature Art, which is historically used to record Sultans' palace life in Ottomans, this project depicts contemporary public scenes.

These highly miniaturized but partially realistic images, are experimental mixtures of photography and drawing components in order to transform photographical reality to a miniature-like feeling. The overall project is an attempt to explore my own gaze on the culture that I grown in.