Young female artists display works of classical Turkish arts

The group exhibition "Imagination II" organized by Gülce Art Group and Istanbul's Eyüp Municipality has opened at Eyüp Municipality's building. The fourth group exhibition of Gülce Art features the best examples of classical Turkish arts including marbling, calligraphy, wood-cutting, illumination and miniature.

Eyüp Municipality Mayor Remzi Aydın spoke to an Anadolu Agency (AA) correspondent during the opening ceremony of the exhibition and said the municipality continues to concentrate on art, culture and educational events. Explaining that the municipality is taking their achievements one step further, Mayor Aydın said: "This exhibition is not put together by amateur artists who trained in the courses of our municipality but professional artists who produce their artworks in their own workshops. Hence, the 'Imagination II' exhibition is kind of a statement of our mission to make Eyüp a center of art and culture. We believe that brings Eyüp residents together with art as a source of motivation."

Gülce Art Group was founded by six female artists who met at Marmara University's Department of Traditional Turkish Arts at the Faculty of Fine Arts. One of the members of the art group, Ümmü Gülsüm Sevim, told an AA correspondent that the members of Gülce Art Group graduated from university last year and they have previously held three other group exhibitions. Sevim said they came together in order to display the artworks they created during their student years and continued: "We practice long-forgotten traditional Turkish art with traditional techniques. We create modern designs without making any sacrifices from the tradition. We use natural paint in our artworks. We also make all of the paper we use from onion, madder, walnut leaves and pomegranate leaves. We apply the exact same techniques that were used in the classical period and do not use any chemicals in our artworks."

Additionally, Ayşe Karaaslan said they dream of establishing an art workshop and stressed the importance of the support they receive from art lovers. Specifying that their primary aim is to protect traditional Turkish arts, Karaaslan said: "We want to improve ourselves as well as our art and make a name for ourselves. There are not many people our age who are interested in traditional Turkish arts. We want to pioneer young people to take interest in these arts as well. We can do all these works individually but we are stronger together."

Funda Arı Karakaş, Fatıma Betül Özer, Neslihan Kocatürk and Zeynep Dursun are also the members of Gülce Art Group.

"Imagination II" features a total of 52 artworks of marbling, calligraphy, illumination, wood-cutting and miniature and can be seen at Eyüp Municipality building until Nov. 30.