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Halıçınarlı depicts the city as seen from above
Looking from above
“I like this state of the city,” says Halıçınarlı. “I did not work on the usual city scenes or architectural studies, but rather I tried to take a look from above.” Coincidentally, the apartments where Halıçınarlı has lived have always been on the top floor, from which she has had a chance to observe the city from a different point of view. “As I looked, I realized that no one looked up. And I liked that scene very much; the antennas, the roofs and the sky, which also have some intangible meanings for me. I also tried to save my work from those commonplace landscapes.”
In some of Halıçınarlı’s work, there are women on the roofs, watching the city or gazing out of the window. These works undoubtedly reflect the feminine aspect of Halıçınarlı’s point of view; however, the young artist says that some people are surprised when they see the women. “When they see the women, they usually draw back,” she says, “because when they are looking at the paintings they suddenly come upon a naked woman. They’re surprised. But this is the human body. And why a woman’s body? This is something that developed spontaneously. The thing I was afraid of was that I didn’t want these women to be perceived as if they were about to commit suicide. Rather, there is an act of watching in a state of simplicity and pureness. This is a dialectical relation, and there is a balance between the complexity of the city and the simplicity of those women.”
Halıçınarlı also establishes a relationship between the fertility of a woman and the formation of a city. “The city is continually reborn,” says Halıçınarlı, explaining the evolution of cities.
Halıçınarlı has used the male figure in her paintings for the first time in this exhibition. “This is to save Eve from being solely responsible for the sin,” explains Halıçınarlı. “Besides, here Adam is still so young and naïve. He has just eaten the apple, and he’s not aware of anything yet.”
“Eve is blamed for everything, but surely, she’s not alone,” she says. “The original sin is being repeated all the time, but Eve is not doing this all alone.”
However, Halıçınarlı’s works are the product of her artistic search, and this search has not yet come to an end; rather, this is just the beginning. “There are things that I am seeking in life, and this is my language. I also don’t know exactly where this is going or where it will end.”
The city of fantasies: İstanbul
The city that inspires Halıçınarlı is, without question, İstanbul. “I don’t know whether I can work in another city or not,” she says, comparing İstanbul with other cities she has visited in Turkey and Europe. “There’s a definition by Freud about city fantasies where nothing is destroyed and everything is built over the other things. I think the city that fits this definition is İstanbul. There is stratification here, and I love it.”
Halıçınarlı is intending to work within this same theme for now. “I’m not sure if I can get that far away from these issues because we are living in this city and İstanbul tells us many things that we want to express.”
The exhibition can be viewed until Jan. 22 at the Enka Dr. Clinton Vickers Art Gallery in İstinye.
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