artnivo.com will be hosting Özer Toroman’s first solo exhibition in the artnivo.com project space that opened in October. The exhibition, which takes its name from the Antony and the Johnsons song “You are my sister”, is comprised of androgynous, out-of-focus portraits that question the limits of gender identity built on societal norms, an issue the artist has been examining for some time.

Toroman, who specifically uses pale pink and blue tones in this canvases, emphasizes the sharp gender-based divide individuals unwittingly enter from childhood on and suggests gender non-identity through the blurring of this divide. In Ahu Antmen’s words, “the formative role of environments separated into pink and blue color schemes that children are subjected to beginning with childhood categorize and stereotype the individual’s sexual development.” These stereotypes limit the individual and force him/her to manifest specific behaviours. By creating flawless faces in his canvases whose genders are not readable and who look the viewer directly in the eye, the artist constructs a space that deactivates all gender norms and invisible walls through communing with the canvas.