Artist reveals love through ceramics, words, colors and smells


Ceramic artist Birsen Canbaz sets out from the lines of Shams Tabrizi in her new solo exhibition and reproduces them with her own words and ceramics.

Presenting an extraordinary exhibition experience about love by blending her works with words, colors, sounds and smells, Birsen Canbaz invites art lovers to see her latest exhibition "O'lacak" at her workshop in Çukurcuma district in Istanbul until June 21.

Inspired by a poem of Rumi's (also know as Mevlana or Jalal ad-Din ar-Rumi) teacher and friend, Shams Tabrizi, in the formation of this exhibition, the artist transforms her workshop into a unique area of experience through storytelling and the presentation of her works.

Visitors at the exhibition will experience the work with a sensory richness that blends light, sound and smells with the guidance of the artist's words.

Canbaz says, "While looking for a measure from my statues, I've chosen equality."

Talking about her creative process and presentation, she says: "My lips whisper my feelings to other ears. Both the sayers and listeners are a candidate to be one in love. When choosing a space, I did not have the heart for carrying my 150-year-old workshop, where the project was born, produced and my inner world and ideas, to someplace far away. I chose Rahim Alhaj, who touched my heart with his works, as the background music of my exhibition. As I reflect the fierce passion of my heart, which consists of countless nodes with the thinnest red ropes, with red light, my hands prayed to blue circles representing the heavens to illuminate the unfulfilled desires in my heart. I prepared candles with fresh bouquets of grass and rose smells so that we could smell the love we felt when walking in the grass with bare feet in spring. I ended my intimate texts that formed the emotional atmosphere and decorated dark walls by rising from my 50-year inner world after saying, 'Today we can lose love, and may remember it again tomorrow. The purest feeling should always be love, and it will be.'"

About Birsen Canbaz

Birsen Canbaz graduated from Istanbul's Mimar Sinan University from the Fine Arts Academy Ceramics Department in 1997. She has had four solo exhibitions and received two awards from state broadcaster TRT with the 17th Contemporary Artists Istanbul Exhibition.

She has written many articles where she connected psychology and art for Popular Psychiatry magazine. Birsen Canbaz continues to produce ceramic works in her own workshop in Istanbul.