Interview with Ceren Oykut at Artissima

What is my name? Thinking and working on this question, the Turkish artist Ceren Oykut took out from the recent, difficult, life of her people, a floating universe of images. After last summer’s facts of Gezi Park, Turkey has started to redefine its inner nature. The painting of Oykut is all about this redefinition: are things going in a good or a bad way? She asked herself. While she was putting on big rolls of paper with her cartoonish figures, protests and sudden silence were happening around, and the same happens in her work. Noise and peace are living together in her representation. As watercolours generate soft lines, ink and markers underline the strife between the people and the police. Cartoon art is as contemporary as it is, often, forgotten by the European artists, who focus on conceptual images both in painting and in sculpture and in construction/demolition of each kind of given statement.

Why is cartoon so developed in Turkey?

Cartoon and caricature are the most used languages in Turkey. This is because of their simplicity and their way of being immediately recognizable. People feel the need to understand what they see and artists have the opportunity to communicate and being clearly understood. Connect ideas becomes easier using this medium.

Why images are slowly decreasing from the top to the bottom of the roll?

I wanted to express the feeling of surrounding: there is a sort of core that is the image of one precise moment of the protest, when people didn’t want to fight against the police; there was chaos everywhere and people stood still. That was their way to fight against violence. So, while the centre of the action is in in the upper side of the roll, looking down you can have the feeling of something in motion. That is also connected with my initial question – what is my name? – because from a situation of crisis we were passing to another, being forced to redefine our mind.

In this way the work looks like it is unfinished…

In fact it is. I wanted to stop it and let it unfinished because the change is still in progress: we will see if change is good or bad and, in a certain way, it is also our task to drive it.

And who are these figures on the wall?

They are taken from a moment of the protest I saw. Old and young men close tight one another trying not to move while the police was forcing them to give up their intent. I blow them up from a detail of the draw. I like to blow details in figures; it’s my way to underline what I like more in what I see.
Ceren Oykut is one of the artists selected by the team of young curators of the Present / Future exhibition of Artissima. Bringing together painting and cartoon, she is the only one who chooses to use these two media together while at the same time being faithful to the artistic tradition of her region, close to the current events of our life, and with an immediately identifiable unique style.

Ceren Oykut, What is my name, X-Ist Gallery at Artissima, Torino