Mekin Avras

Mekin Avras was born in Bitlis in 1991. The negative side effects of the forced migration process that my family and I lived through between 1992-1998, during my childhood, are among the main elements that formed the foundation of my artistic memory.

Between 2007-2012, while studying at the Department of Painting, Avni Akyol Anatolian Fine Arts High School in Istanbul, I aimed to combine interdisciplinary art with social science and delve into the inner dynamics of regional communities. Between 2012-2016, due to economic concerns, I paused my education and worked in labor-intensive jobs. During this time, I observed the collapse of educational institutions in Turkey and how the system evolved into darkness, which led me to decide to pursue university education.

Between 2016-2020, I completed my undergraduate education in the Department of Painting and Art Education at Marmara University Faculty of Education. The greatest gain from my university education was the following question: Despite the corrupt face of the education system, how could I nourish myself between disciplines in art and how could I present my thoughts through a relational approach? Around this question, between 2016-2020, I transformed a room in the basement of my house, where my family and I lived with my own means, into a small functional studio and continued my production on this basis. Throughout this process, by reflecting on my artistic life and experiences, I aimed to draw attention to general social issues and raise awareness of the public, emphasizing justice and equality, while promoting social change. Later, my analysis process introduced me to psychology. The field of psychology became an effective factor in my personal hysterical approach towards events and structures, both in my art practice and beyond. Looking from this perspective, I adopted the mission of making my general artistic world tangible and transforming my goals into action.

I worked on understanding living and non-living beings in nature, observing relational interactions in the common denominator, and analyzing interconnected event structures through an artistic lens, reflecting the integrity of meaning in my work.

In recent times in Istanbul, I asked myself serious questions about my goals and desires. I found the answers to these questions in the traumatic events I had been living through for years. I took the opportunity to transform my desires into action and decided to continue my production in Adana starting in 2021. Some of the desires I aimed to achieve were to confront the traumas of the city I had lived in and convey the paradigm of truth to the public. By focusing on the sociology of cities, cosmopolitan and class issues, I made deep readings on cultural norms and class conflicts and produced work in painting, photography, and installation fields, focusing on understanding events from the perspective of social psychology.

In my interdisciplinary artistic practice, I have incorporated the modernized impressions of the perception of reality from H. Bosch, Goya, and Bacon, as well as incorporating philosophical manifestos from Slavoj Zizek, Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, and Simone de Beauvoir into my inner world. Additionally, I carefully integrate the technical tools of my works to ensure the complete unification of the subject matter. The area of interdisciplinary art that I should address with my intended subject matter also determines the essential concept of the ideas I wish to convey.