Barnard Art History (Visual Arts) Senior Thesis Project

I create collages that delve into the imperfect nature of personal and collective memory through surrealism. By blending my own photographs with images from family archives, I construct artworks that layer various, sometimes fabricated, narratives—evoking the malleability of the past.

My heritage bridges Iraq and Turkey, two countries often represented in ways that diverge sharply from my family’s own memories. Family photos from my father’s side depict Iraq in the seventies—a time viewed as a high point before Saddam’s presidency, before the wars, and before the U.S. invasion. My mother’s side reflects another narrative of Turkey, one deeply connected to my grandfather, who shaped history through his political work and as head of TRT, the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation. Through these collages, I explore how public and private histories intersect, tracing the differences between media portrayals and family memories. My own images, along with photos from my childhood, express how history is intertwined with my identity and my current state of being. Through this project, I aim to reveal the subjectivity embedded in archives and memory.