THE HARD TWISTED ANIMAL INSIDE ME

I’m a human being with a head, a body, arms and legs. Some call me a woman, while some others a jazz singer, a songwriter, or a radio girl. Mom calls me my daughter and my therapist calls me an artist, who castrated her true self through countless cruel judgements to reach the “perfect”. And I was calling myself “the summary of failure in every aspect of life”. I was the residue of virtue, the left-over of teenage years, the remnants of high ideals, the scarecrow of love and a good-for-nothing.

I was stuck in the deep economic crisis and the sinister social injustice of my now-100-year-old, “modern islamic” country. Tormented by social media’s algorithms dictating me what is good, beautiful, or clever and totally alienated from my childhood... There was no future left, because there was no possibility of any surprise to break this vicious cycle. I was on the verge of giving an end to it all.

Then one day, during an online session, my therapist, who lives a secluded life up in the Assos mountains, said something that gave me the power to start changing it all. She, looked into my eyes and said: “You don’t have to be perfect, because there’s nothing called perfect in life. All you need to do is to “live your life” and “to exist”. Just do it. If you want to leave a trace behind this is the only way.”

The following days, I started to toy with her words in my mind. Okay let’s live my life. But how will I do this? By climbing up a mountain? Or hanging on a rope hooked to the board of an oil tanker as a Greenpeace protestor? By developing another artistic career strategy? Or by finding a man and giving birth to three kids? What would be my way of “living”?

The next week, one evening, I took a black pilot pen and a piece of cheap second pulp paper from the drawer of my desk. Placed the pen over the paper with no plan in my head. I had tried this maybe a thousand times in the past, and it had never worked. I was always stuck at some point. But this time, I started a new stream of consciousness like this:

“I’m a creature. An animal called a human being. So, what type of animal am I? Should it be an animal that we know from the nature or from the Shamanic rituals? Or is there a unique animal inside me, always in the flow? If so, its body must be moving at will and should be changing shape as it moves and maybe it doesn’t have to care if it is beautiful or functional or fertile. It should just live a life. And
should have some blood inside, the oven of its existence.”

Then the tip of the pen started spreading its ink freely. After thirteen years’ break, my hand started to work. And meanwhile, I repeated these words loudly:
“I don’t have to be perfect. I should flow and I should exist. I have all the knowledge inside my body and I should let it come back. That’s how I’ll grow. But not to be better. To change and keep living. I should be like a stream finding its way through the topography of my instincts. They will lead me. I am THE ANIMAL INSIDE ME”
I was guided by this manifesto faster than I envisioned. In a month, I had drawn around 100 “animals”.

Then shared these with people around me. Some said these are not animals but the reflection of my psychological state. Some kept silent, while some others bought pens and new paper and posted them to me. And I kept drawing. So that’s how you see the drawing collection called THE ANIMAL INSIDE ME in my portfolio. A small
collection called THE HUMAN INSIDE ME followed this. And later on, tracing some theological ideas on human existence which had been looping in my mind since decades found their way into ink and paper and they evolved into, yet another small collection called EXISTENCE in my portfolio. For the latter, I took
inspiration from the brush strokes of the iconic Ottoman calligraphist (hattat) Emin Barın.

When I came across with Be Still Media's open call, I decided to transform this process into yet another level. I decided to bring the ANIMALS INSIDE ME into 3 dimensions. First, searched for some raw material at home. Found a big bulk of onion skin papers used inside shoe boxes. They were also used for wrapping
fragile objects. That was the Aha! moment. Something to wrap what is fragile. Something simple and something that can change shape in an endless manner. What a charm! Plus, it had its chattering sound.

It was talking to me as I molded it. Secondly, my hands reached for the newly bought printer ink bottles. Black, cyan, magenta and yellow. Some material used for computerized production, but now it could be a part of my totally manual “less-
is-more” project. So, I dropped this ink into plastic trays full of water and plunged the paper clusters inside. Experimented with different coloring techniques and twisted the paper clusters by hand very firmly to make robes out of them. These very soft ropes dried out and became as rigid as wood. These very organic structures mesmerized me. They were just like the limbs of an unknown animal or plant. And they would re-dissolve again if plunged into water again.

These hard twisted robes were to cover and protect what is fragile, the soul of the animal inside me. They were twisted by life experiences so firmly that they were also like thought patterns. They could help me stand tall but also caged me inside. Now the animals inside me were frozen inside these hard twisted skeletons. I also made little black, white and red paper stone balls and tucked these inside my
skeletons to constitute the inner organs of the animals. Especially the heart!
I covered a souvenir basket from my childhood with them.

I spread them out of the banknote-tucking-hole of a coin box that I used to use for saving up money when I was a kid. A box that represented my dreams now spread out only the hard twisted fibers of my fears. I wrapped some twisted robes around my fingers and made 3 figures. 3 beings twisting with pain. They
were the 3 monkeys of my soul with heads red and stony. 

Note: In October 2024, before celebrating my 40th birthday, I destroyed all these animals. So the project reached its ultimate goal.