A Dream in the Abyss
In the morning, as I woke up in the living room, I saw a little girl in a purple dress staring down at me from the ceiling to the bed. Caught between drowsiness, I felt like I was living in a moment that blurred the lines between dream and reality. I felt the vibrancy and eeriness of this child of extraordinary proportions down to my very core. It was as if I was face-to-face with a striking image that made me think I was surrounded by giants, like in Gulliver’s land. I forced myself to continue the dream. Then I grabbed my phone, took a picture of the little girl staring at me, and captioned it ‘Waking up like this in the morning’ in a post on my Instagram.
As mentioned in the anechtode, one is caught between dream and reality when meeting with Nihal Martlı’s paintings. The imagery of women in her paintings often appears at first glance as an artist’s self-portrait depicted in a romantic, epic, and dream-like atmosphere, they carry the stories of inspiring women figures from the myths, and tales into the portrait of the artist. The common ground of these narratives that are blended with grief, injustice, and disregard but end up with opposition and victory is that they all belong to these powerful women who did not abide by patriarchy and shattered all stereotypes. The notion of power, on the other hand, brings forth the emotional states such as healing, caring, empathy, and intuitive sensations that the feminine energy bears and places at the center of this exhibition. Although everything goes in the reverse direction, the artist insists and repeats: Everything is Fine!

The exhibition constitutes all of her series since 2005, the beginning of her career, and resembles a mass behind a single image of a woman. Starting from her personal and daily life the artist subjects a wide range of social traumas to its care and rehabilitation. In her Fairies series, she visits some characters and spaces that give full play to one’s imagination and develop a sense of empathy, in the same fashion in her series of Pastiches where she takes masterpieces from the history of the art and reinterprets some themes and characters likewise Judith, who has been multiple times depicted and related to freedom, virtue and victory. The method she applies by re-reading relics of the past stories in today’s codes manifests a time that is unregistrable or an absent reality. She intertwines traumatic experiences from her own life with stories from other women who have faced suppression, torture, or underestimation. Despite the heaviness of these narratives, they portray individuals who are self-confident, ambitious, and filled with passion. This is another way of healing.

To purify oneself from negative thoughts and convert the violance into something positive one effective method is to release those feelings through creative expression, such as painting. In her series titled Art de Vivre, Martlı captures her belief that life is filled with simple joys and transforms everyday moments into something beautiful by depicting a warm and inviting atmosphere of home. This sense of belonging serves as a remedy for the soul. Another avenue for Martlı’s expression is music. Her works titled *Je m’aime* (I Love Myself) and *Ve L’amitié* (Friendship) utilize a medium that is not commonly employed by artists. These video pieces feature nurses and patients from a palliative care hospital where she participated in a residency in France. In these videos, the women sing songs in repeat that suggest a collective and harmonious resistance against overwhelming depression and the pain experienced by those in severe distress.

Dreaming and being underwater evoke similar feelings. Japanese writer Dr. Masaru Emoto studies the behavior of water, which is the most susceptible element to influence. Through mental stimuli, he observes that emotions like love and gratitude are reflected in water, leading to the formation of most wonderful water crystals. Since approximately seventy percent of the human body is composed of water, this connection is significant. Through the voices, colors, and resonant sounds of music performed by compassionate women with a heightened intuitive sense, Martlı convinces us that creating the most unique crystal drop is indeed possible.
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- Courtsey of the artist: Nihal Martlı and Fikret Otyam Contemporary Arts Center, Everything is Fine!, Ankara , 2024
- Photo credit: Mert Acar


