I’VE BEEN WATCHING THE SCULPTOR/ARTIST NILHAN SESALAN FROM A DISTANCE FOR A LONG TIME AND I THINK THAT HER WORKS ESTABLISH A BOND WITH ARCHITECTURE. MOST RECENTLY, I ADMIRINGLY WATCHED HER WORK EVOKING THE FORM OF A METICULOUSLY ENGRAVED GIANT EGG ENTITLED ANATOLIA, WHICH WAS EXHIBITED AT THE CONTEMPORARY ISTANBUL INTERNATIONAL ART FAIR IN 2015. HAVING WORKS IN NUMEROUS COLLECTIONS, PARKS AND MUSEUMS ALL AROUND THE WORLD, WE CAN EASILY SAY THAT SHE IS A SYMBOL OF LYRICAL ABSTRACTIONISM IN TURKEY BY SIMPLY LOOKING AT HER WORKS UP UNTIL NOW. FOLLOWING THE SINCERE CONVERSATION WE MADE WITH THE ARTIST WHO SKILLFULLY USES ALL SORTS OF MATERIALS, I REALLY WANTED TO INTRODUCE HER CLOSELY WITH OUR READERS AND SHOW HOW SKILLED SHE IS AT CRAFTING NATURAL STONES.
Heval Zeliha Yüksel Mimar / Architect
The artist who also contributes to life with her designs and writings says in a poem:
“I love my thoughts,
the process in which they make me believe…
when I am convinced they will not leave me
I transfer them to a material and I say ‘done’.
With that energy, I can hold my breath longer
and find power for life.”
Could you tell us your story to begin with?
I was born in Istanbul; in a two-storied house with a garden near Lake Küçükçekmece as the middle one of three children of a migrant father from Kosovo and a mother from Tekirdağ. When me and my sister Fetiye started to study in Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, the Department of Sculpture in 1987, we felt really excited about being alone with a brand new ‘thing’ that we had no idea of, forming the clay in our hands and visualizing the abstract thoughts through materials.
I realized many years later that the exercises of tangible and intangible spread all over my life and turned into a work of art that also includes me. I engaged with posters, novels, movies, costumes, lighting, casting and music design as well.
In 1997, we moved to Kuzguncuk with my husband Cengiz and in 2001, our daughter Asya was born. Our studio was also located in Kuzguncuk. In the early years, Fetiye Boudevin, Cengiz Yüzsever, me and Hale Pekcan were working all together. It was full of materials leaving no room for the rest of us at our little studio in 1993. Since then, i have as much memory as my studios where i made countless sculptures, questioning from the simple daily events to whole existence.
I started my Pollen Age sculptures in 2005. I was thinking my world perspective that keeps developing since the day i was born, was going through a strong metamorphosis and transformation along with everything else. As if millions of pollens were flitting around me without knowing what they were supposed to get together with. Ten years later, the Syrian Migration coincides with my feelings of the Pollen Age.
In this period, i made my sculptures entitled ‘A House For My Roots’, ‘All Waters of the World Interwine’, ‘Journey’, ‘Seven Seas’, ‘Limbo’, ‘Taller Than Me’ and ‘Shhh…My Land’.
There are also ‘Full With Words’, ‘Those Who Come But Won’t Leave’ and the residual ones that i haven’t included in the series. All these ideas make me realize that they continue their existence at times i can’t anticipate. Therefore i understand that i do not perceive like the westerners in a linear way but in a pointwise manner like the easters; at any moment, anything can interact with each other.
Your sculptures also have stories. You combine your works with very deep words. Could we hear some stories of your sculptures?
Actually i’m not designing my sculptures on a story basis, in fact the process begins to evolve with a little spontaneous triggering. In order to describe the taste of a fruit, it needs to grow first. Along with an approximate description, the idea initially turns into matter and after that, i really enjoy describing my works through words by analyzing them.
Along with the layers of my existence, words, forms, sounds, odors, i disperse through life only by thinking, just like the waves of a stone thrown in the water…
“…HER WORKS PRESERVE A DEEP HISTORICAL – CULTURAL BACKGROUND, ALL THE CONNOTATIONS AND STRESS OF THE PRESENT, AND AN ENDLESS INFERENCE AND PEACE FOR THE FUTURE.
THEMES VARYING FROM HUMAN LIFE TO THE SECRETS AND CHAOS OF THE NATURE TRANSFORM INTO PEACE -WITH ENDLESS CONNOTATIONS- OF A WORK WHICH HAS ITS OWN FREEDOM; SOLID, DEEP, SELF CONFIDENT, LIKE A DERVISH WHISPERING PROFOUND THOUGHTS.“
YÜKSEL AKSU, DIRECTOR
Anatolia and Star Dust series look like a follow-up. How did you bring them into existence?
All of my works entitled Anatolia and Star Dust are results of my discussions with my own ideas…
Which natural stone do you use in particular? From where do you obtain it?
In my ‘Black Book’ sculpture, i was happy to be able to find a dark gray basalt that blackens when polished.
In ‘Asia Bird’, the resistance and strenght of the stone while sculpting the cloudy marble was uniquely suited for my sculpture, devoted to peace.
As for ‘Shhh..My Land’ that i built in 2007, it especially required the lyrical Muğla Stone…I browse everywhere to find the stone i’m looking for. I know many of the quarry owners in Turkey. Sometimes i look for three months with lots of coaxing.
Are there any difficulties in working with stones? For example, your work entitled ‘Two Anatolian Leopard’ is quite big in size. How did you handle the difficulties?
Working with stone is both difficult and enjoyable. Diamond disks spinning at 11000 rpm carry significant risks. You need to approach with high concentration to your work as well as your technique.
For ‘Two Anatolian Leopard’, i worked with andesite that contains silicon. Quarried from Konya-Çumra, it’s a strong stone heading way back to the era of Hittites and Seljuks. I used disks dedicated for granite and it was a bit difficult to find the flanged ones. You can find basically anything in Istanbul.
My tool bag is heavy and machines, lump hummers and bush hammers inside are intriguing for customs officers. Sculptors working with stone all around the world are the ones that wait the most for their luggages. If you’re a bit dark colored and wearing a parka, you might be easily considered as a terrorist. They won’t have the difficulty to understand that those kneaded with stone transforms into a cottony state.
Occasionally, the shipment of the large scale stones, their compliance to the texture i want and their sizing might take a while or cost a lot. In times like these, quarry owners provide full support to artistic works. Mustafa Ermaş is one of them.
Where do your works get exhibited right now?
In squares of Turkey, Argentina, India, Japan, France, Greece, Finland and they’re in museums and private collections. Recently, an urban sculpture exhibiton was held in Germany for ‘Building 9 Bridges’. Along with nine artists from France, Germany, Hungary and Portugal, we shipped our works with trucks and implemented our installations on a designated avenue. In the end of three months, only a single work of an artist was going to get exhibited permanently in the city. A pleasant opening ceremony is held along with the participations of the Prime Minister and Minister of Culture of the German State, Hesse, in a place used as a bath house by the Romans where the underground waters merge. They placed my sculpture at this exact point. I was really happy. My sculpture assembling various dynamics such as the fountains of Ottoman, man and woman, intangible and tangible, carries on its adventure at a unique space, unlike any of my estimations.
“Nilhan Sesalan is a sculptor who is inspired from the land she lives, and she carries her cultural heritage into a universal dimension. She lives in Istanbul, and her works clearly have socio-psychological, cultural and architectural references to Anatolia including Seljuk and Ottoman mosques, madrasas and gravestones. She masterfully embodies historical and architectural codes related to Seljuk and Ottoman art, and combines them with personal and artistic codes, using an abstract lyrical expression. Seljukian stonemasonry and geometry which have almost disappeared today come to life in her contemporary perspective.
Throughout her career, Sesalan has used concepts related to various cultures and religions together with inspirations from nature. References to Islamic art in her works should be considered as a part of her search for an interreligious peace and a natural harmony. One of her latest works she completed in Israel is a good example to her point of view. She was invited to “Stone in the Galilee” International Scupture Symposium in Israel, in March 2015, for her project entitled “Natural Born Star”. Her sculpture which is exhibited in public sphere is devoted to intercultural and interreligious peace.
Her latest work Anatolia has references to nature and various cultures in the land she lives. Seljuk art which has been a very strong element in this unique composition of the land reaches to Sesalan, and through her works, to contemporary art world.”
“The title, Anatolia, means “land of mothers” in Turkish and it has an emphasis on the concept fertility. The egg hiding a new life in itself is a perfect symbol for this land which has been home to various cultures and migrations in history. Migratory birds together with the fertility concept inspired the shape of egg. Her inspiration usually comes from many points in a lyrical way. Like writing a poem some words appear in her mind, they connotate other words and all of them let Sesalan shape her work in lyricism. Here are some of the words in her mind while working on Anatolia:
Anatolia, an egg,
Kybele…
Black: ink; white: paper,
Geometry,
Stone.”
Arzu Taşçıoğlu
Your sculptures are your way of describing the existence. What do you want to narrate in your works?
In my works, i tend to question for understanding and get closer to my existence rather than describing it.
Could you tell us about your current and future works?
I worked really hard this summer. I made the sculpture ‘My Demoiselle Crane’ for my parents; life, crane, my mother, my father and i melted in the same pot. Dressing stones in Marmara Island was a dream of mine for a long time and it became a reality. I worked as an art director in the movie entitled ‘İftarlık Gazoz’ by Yüksel Aksu. Through sharing seven months of my life for this project, i had the chance to work with people who have matured in their fields, such as Berat Efe Parlar, Mirsad Herovic and Cem Yılmaz. Cinema is a discipline where i can feel the existence of collective intelligence. It’s precious for what i contribute, as well as what i get in the end.
The movie ‘İftarlık Gazoz’ in which i worked as the art director, is completed at the end of this summer. During my researchs that took two years, i found the opportunity to observe the history of the republic of Turkey and the etnographic richness of the Aegean Region. For me, the collective intelligence of the cinema is a booster shot for the social life.
Recently i’m working for urban stone furnitures and the organization of a sculpture symposium. My first symposium was at Didim at 2008. I find it valuable for sculptures around to world to create works for public spaces.
Besides, the obsidians in Kars attract me like a magnet. A studio is set up in Sarıkamış, i offered a workshop schedule to the manager for sharing my experiences with the friends there and they accepted it. It’s going to be fun working there in the first weeks of March.
In the meantime, my sculpture work ‘Soulmates’ continues. I initially form these sculptures from stone and then i make a mould and pour bronze in it. Works with different materials and similar forms appear. Most recently, the triad of Discobolus exhibited by Kuad Gallery in Contemporary Istanbul, is included in the series.
Thank you for all the information you have shared.
