Using neurological condition to gain perfection in art

By Salih Seref

ISTANBUL (AA) - Using neurological disorder synesthesia to her advantage, Turkish architect Melek Zeynep Bulut is engaged in creating unique pieces of art.

As in this neurological condition, information sent by the brain to stimulate one of the senses incites other senses as well, she is using this ability to transform different senses, such as smelling textures, hearing colors, or tasting sounds.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Bulut said the theme of her art is based on human rights, education of refugee children, and their empowerment.

After studying architecture, she worked on her artistic projects in her workshop in Istanbul with the help of a young team, working with her for over seven years in her architecture company.

According to Bulut, she spends most of her time in Istanbul's historical peninsula for inspiration.

"Here, I produce by analyzing textures, buildings, people, and materials, and creating data related to them.

"We established an open lab system here and I can safely say we started to work on art and design products through this system," she said.

She said that while working on her art project, her focal point remains on the spirit of the material and finding out ways of its transformation.

"For example, wood wants to be spiral, water wants to flow, and stone wants to be steady. I'm working on these and their existence in accordance with their chemistry and how we could interpret these into the material," she added.

Bulut said she makes research on stories of children taken away from their families by some terrorist organizations which use them to meet their political ends. She thinks of ways to reintegrate them into the society and about the ordeal of their mothers during the process.

- Turning wounds into power

"All of these are the major wounds in our geography. And I concentrate on how we could aestheticize them through science and art, how we would create a groundwork from the very beginning and turn all wounds into power," she said.

In her exhibition on the theme of Feb. 28, 1997 "postmodern" coup by the military causing the downfall of the government, Bulut magnified an actual wound 200 times to represent the healing process, she added.

"People come and go around you while you remain stationary. We experience this in everything. We experienced it during the Feb. 28 [events], we are also experiencing many social traumas. A wound is not a negative experience. Our path, a wound, is an experience that develops and makes us grow," she said.

Bulut's art installation at the office of Directorate General of Migration Management in Istanbul is called the “murmuration”, which means murmurs symbolize a trilogy.

She said she wanted to explain the phenomenon of migration through representations of heaven, hell, and purgatory from Dante's Divine Comedy.

"My work at the migration management office symbolizes purgatory. The hell point of the trilogy is a solution I've been working with refugees on the Syrian border and heaven is going to be in a location in Europe dedicated to human rights where the work will represent the heartbeat of a child," she said.

Bulut stressed that the migration office in Istanbul was a critical location for right in the middle of Istanbul where around 5 million migrants enter and leave.

"The name of the project is 'murmuration', and we designed a bunch of bird sound mechanisms. When designing this flock, we superimposed the vocal mechanisms of birds and the vocal mechanisms of migrating people. We froze the moment when the bird was fully liberated and reproduced from that moment. This is also square one, a starting point.

"So it stands here as a symbol of the resumption of hope, of square one, of being an individual, of being an individual without being guided or marginalized, and of the new world," Bulut added.