SEMA BOYANCI

10 which the inhabitants have migrated, decorate the walls of local barbershops, coffeehouses, bean and meatball restaurants… Recent history, the shantytowns besieging our big cities along their perimeters, at one point the most tense and controversial codes arising as though ahistorical, of hybrid nomadic cultures synthesized from both distinctions and overlapping similarities of contemporary-ish cultures considered settled but not quite sufficiently modernized… At a time, the rise of “arabesque” music ascending inwardly, feverishly, from the outskirts to the center, from the center to the suburbs, striking images of mutually scattered intellectual, social, political, cultural and philosophical transformations. Sema Boyancı bases her work precisely upon these abundantly vivacious, vibrant, cultural images, layers, mutual symbolic fluidities and the contemporary object imagery rising out of them. One: A diligently executed photo-realistic (hyper-realist can be said as well) oil painting of a piece of cloth with its purplish curves excessively signified, patterned and covered with Ottoman motifs on a canvas framed with raw yellow pine molding… Upon it, mounted a few centimeters apart, oil painting on glass of tasseled, hand-crafted floral pendants particularly baked in a kiln to prevent breakage, as if beaded on rope, with a knockoff Ottoman coat of arms made of silver beneath it… Two: Once again, similarly on canvas, purplish with curves distinctly defined, woven millimeter by millimeter like canvas, a goat bell, covered with painted geometric patterns, and mounted again with oil paint on special glass, once more as if evoking a sensation of being suspended… a turquoise colored ribbon… an orange floral pendant… a piece from the decoration of a horse saddle, and so on. Three: Once more, meticulously crafted with oil paint and brush, an image of a patterned, curved, grayish piece of cloth… and again on mounted glass, as if compressed within the frame, tied to the tip of a rope and released, evoking a perception of suspension, a half-dried yellow leaf from a poplar tree… Four: again with a similar logic and intent, a patterned piece of fabric has been worked on and placed on canvas, appearing on glass as if suspended, a necklace of dried, hot red pepper. Five: Six: Seven: So forth..: the same photo-realistic, curved, patterned fabric upon similar academic oil painting canvases with glass appended, or appearing as such, as if suspended, a cat, a bride, a soldier, a pigeon, a gridded page with writing on it torn from a notebook, a shiny colored embroidered headscarf strewn upon a rope suspended from right to left, two doves cooing, a gem necklace, plastic fish, and so on… As a life evolving, first Mersin… then the years in Ankara, followed by the Cunda peninsula… then Datça… and other rural spaces… Nomadic cultures… assiduous, tiny but vital images, printed dresses, curves, jitney, horse carriage,