SENA KARATAS-OZTURK MIGRATING TOWERS SERIES, ‘DISCREPANCY’

103 x 163 cm - 40 11/20 x 64 17/100

The concept of heritage supports the themes in the artist’s artwork, including historical buildings, such as towers and castles, which reflect the society from the time they were built to the current day by watching over the land and people. Every major city in the world seems to have a characteristic tower representing its historical background: the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Big Ben in London, the Tower of Pisa in Pisa, and the Galata Tower in Istanbul. She mainly uses the Galata Tower as a reference in her paintings because of its aesthetic form and historicalsocietal role. For example, the Galata Tower, one of the most famous historical towers of Istanbul, has witnessed many historical periods like the 507 AD Byzantine period, 1348 Genoese, 1453 Ottoman Empire, and 1923 Republic of Turkey/Turkiye. It has served different functions in the service of many civilizations, like a prison and a fire tower; however, due to a lack of funding, the people have no means to preserve or renovate it, which generally ends with a fire disaster or neglect.

After these catastrophes, suddenly, there might be new investment projects in these areas, such as luxurious restaurants and hotels, leading me to wonder: Are all these catastrophes a coincidence or purposeful? We, as world citizens, have many problems with our historical structures, such as insufficient restoration, unusual use, and ridiculous colors. Sena Karatas-Ozturk deforms the historical towers like simple objects and worthless toys by criticizing this insensitive attitude toward our historical heritage. With this critical style she adopts in her artworks, she aims to question the audience’s adherence to their cultural, artistic, and historical heritage. While transferring her sketches to the textured canvas, she uses oil or acrylic paint as an impressionist artist because she believes that using textured canvas and these painting mediums helps to obtain textures similar to reflect the spirit in the surface of architectural structures that are our historical heritage. Although the artist prefers to harmonize color, sometimes a social issue like people’s ignorance about heritage might inform a given color palette.