12 illustrations (4 presented here). Charcoal and mixed media on paper. 35×50 cm each. 1993.
In 1992 I encountered Alev Alatlı's novel Viva La Muerte — and found in it a framework for things I had been struggling to name. Alatlı draws on Erich Fromm's distinction between biophilia and necrophilia: not as a literal condition, but as a cultural orientation — a civilization's tendency to be drawn toward decay, control, and lifelessness rather than growth and vitality. The book gave me a language for a discomfort I had felt for years.
I began making illustrations immediately. The project grew into a planned exhibition — conceived together with Alatlı herself. There were eventually twelve works. The turbulent political and economic climate of Turkey in the early 1990s intervened, and both the exhibition and the collaboration were shelved.
Thirty years later, I find in these pieces something I could not have predicted at the time: a document of a particular moment of lucidity, and of an intention that was never fulfilled. I present four of them here — not as historical artifacts, but as works that, I believe, have not yet finished speaking.
