Curatorial Text

NOT DROWNING, BUT EXISTING: THREE BODIES Water does not forget. Whatever is placed upon it, it carries — the scream, the silence, the surrender, the resistance. The body is the same. The female body has been both a battlefield and a witness throughout history; it has been silenced and yet, within that silence, has invented a language. This exhibition follows precisely that language through works by three women artists. Seray Küçük's figures scream beneath the water — mouths open, voices gone. But this silence is not a defeat. As Audre Lorde said: "Your silence will not protect you." Seray's figures already know this; they are underwater not because they chose silence, but because they were silenced. And yet they remain. Eyes open. Tuğba Çakal approaches the body as a medium of record. A body that is faint yet leaves a mark, fragile yet protective. Hélène Cixous once said that women must learn to write from the body — "Write yourself; let your body be heard." Tuğba's canvases respond to precisely that call: the body here is both wound and memory and refuge. Özge Koz places a breath right in the middle, between two poles. A figure that surrenders but does not disappear. Simone de Beauvoir said that in order to define herself, a woman must first reject the definition imposed upon her. Özge's figure is the silent form of that rejection — neither fighting nor fleeing, simply choosing to exist. Virginia Woolf once wrote: The most dangerous thing for a woman is not being able to hear her own voice. The three artists in this exhibition have seen that danger and carried it onto the canvas. They have chosen not drowning, but existing. The water is still there. But this time, the body is stronger. Seray Küçük Born in 2003 in Giresun, painter Seray Küçük is a graduate of the Painting Department at Görele Faculty of Fine Arts. The women in her works oscillate between anxiety, inner fragility, and hidden strength — each painting is a record of an inner journey, a play of shadow and light. For her, art is a guarantee of neither happiness nor freedom; it is the most sincere and honest expression of existence. Tuğba Çakal Istanbul-born architect and painter Tuğba Çakal constructs scenes in her figurative and portrait-focused works that are rooted in reality yet evoke a deep sense of unease in the viewer. On her canvas, the body is both wound and memory and refuge. Özge Koz Born in 1977 in Ankara, painter Özge Koz is a graduate of Gazi University. Having taught painting for many years before continuing her practice in her own studio, Koz's works explore the quiet resistance that lies within surrender.