Image © Hikmet Guler
We paid a visit to the studio of young multi-disciplinary artist Zeynep Birced, located in Galatasaray. Her modest atelier mirrors her effortless eclectic taste, and her similarly varied work. Birced confessed she works best in there when she invites other artists to work in the studio, in order to create a collective atmosphere of concentrated work. Birced knew she would go to art school already early on, and more specifically, she knew she’d go to Central Saint Martins, where she received her graduate degree. Learning how to visualise things, she says, was one of the most important things she acquired there. After four years in London, Birced returned to Istanbul, and there are many positive sides to being here, she says.“I’m not complaining about Istanbul like a lot of people do, I think I’m quite satisfied here”. Of course one of the most important sides of being in Istanbul is the fact that anything, any material she might need, is available – and at a very reasonable price, too. But though she says she is quite content here for now, she sees herself as a nomad, with a passion for exploring new places that would feed her creativity.
Birced works with various materials – too many to mention – which change according to whatever she’s producing. Never limiting herself to one discipline, her work spans paintings and collages to massive brass tree installations. Birced’s initial focus is on the meaning of every unit when taken apart from the whole discourse. The work she exhibited in the Contemporary Istanbul art fair consisted of pages of a single book, an interactive piece where the visitors could choose any page and take it with them.
She occasionally turns to collage, regarding it as a “relaxing space”. She doesn’t get inspired by things or places but rather by the things she reads or the music she listens to. “I try to exclude aesthetics from my works but it seemed futile after a while, as even when you look at a Maslow triangle you realise there’s aesthetics in everything.” Another point of interest in her work is the conflict between the Id and the Super Ego. “It’s interesting how humans fell trees, produce paper out of them and write ‘save the trees’ on it. Its almost an oxymoron.” She tends to play with these situations as moments of comic relief, also using the titles as important elements of her works: “The fact that everything exists alongside its opposite, that’s what triggers me.”
As part of a special collaboration, Sleek has teamed up with ISTANBUL’74 to bring you exclusive Studio Visit’s directly from the heart of Turkey’s thriving art and fashion community. For each new issue of Sleek there will be a new studio visit from the Turkish cultural capital, curated by ISTANBUL’74, giving readers the chance to see what happens behind the closed doors of an artist’s studio.
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