We got to know you as the illustrator of Lombak section  and then later you kept on working in L-manyak, Penguen magazines. Would you like to tell us about how did you start this journey?

I wanted to be a painter when I was having my eduction in Faculty of Fine Arts. I couldn't finish the school in a young age; I was 27 and yet I still couldn't have the relationship with painting. So I went towards caricature.  So it was waiting for the age of fifty to paint. Then I became a caricaturist, but I never thought I loved this job or did it with full dedication. I always separated painting and caricature - my heart was always with painting. As fara as I am concerned the caricature shouldn't have been in the center of my life, yet it did. Because this a poisonous taste that can't be quit once started - I have fun while I am illustrating the caricatures. But I would have preferred only to paint instead of never starting illustrating caricature. 

Do you think being a caricaturist is hard thing to do in Turkey? Have you ever felt restricted? You were exposed to harsh criticism either for a caricature that you drew for Penguen,  or for playing cards design for 'Ottoman Bugs'. Does this situation bother you?

I am having fun since Turkey is a country with rich materials. I have got no problem with criticism; because we are ready for it. I wouldn't want to be a caricaturist in Denmark for instance; because Denmark would be a country short on material. It is more fun to be the caricaturist of morbid societies.

You deal with socio-political, cultural and social elements in your caricatures and painting. What is it that feeds you the best, when you are scrutinizing serious problems such as patriarchal social structure and family institution?

In fact I can say that I feed from my own life, my inner world, my childhood, my family, the house I live, the adults I get in touch with and again my own life for the paintings. I mean I can paint eternally even if I am on top of a mountain. Because that material is hidden inside me. 

But, one needs to be urban, socially strong, close to street, curious and extrovert for caricature. Yet I live in a village now and caricature remains in the background for me in that sense. If you are not in the city, it is hard to illustrate caricature; because the material doesn't flow in front of your eyes then. But the material for painting is always hidden inside you. I mean a good artist can paint after his death as well and so he does anyway. But a very good caricature illustrated by a good caricaturist indurable in time. Caricature get old together with both agenda and the change in the perception of humour.  Painting is more permanent and ostentatious area.

Most of the people know you with sharp, smart and at the same time humorous illustrations. Does it make you uncomfortable that your artist side is not being known?

It doesn't make me uncomfortable. I can't change this now. I think being popular with high art and being popular with humour are quite similar. I think the thing called artistic / artist fame is repulsive, sham and blank. I don't find being popular very meaningful, but there is a pleasant side of be recognised and known. I think this situation is going to slowly end for me as well. There is a great difference in between reaching out to people with an exhibition, which at most a thousand people will visit and reaching out to sixty thousand reader in a week.  

The humorous language, which we are used to see in your caricatures give way to worry and fear. What is it that lies behind your anxious paintings?

I am a person like this actually. Although I look like a happy and a person with high energy in daily life, there is a side deep down inside me, who is looking at life in a very sad way. It is very late to use humour to express my pessimistic, dark world. Painting is more of a correct environment in order to express my darkness, pessimism, melancholy, depression, apprehensions freely.  There I exult. I don't like my happy paintings. 

It is like as if your are destroying happy family tabloids and trying to show the problems of family that are covered with starched embroideries, in your paintings. What does the concept of family mean to you?

Family or whatever it is called: I live those domestic concepts. I don't give them up; they form a part of my life. But I enjoy criticising or expressing the opposite. When I fiddle with these kind of concepts not what they look like, but what they really are, then it becomes richer and enjoyable material. It is more fun for me to clean the flees of a poodle or have something odd in a delicious food.  It is very pleasant to reverse what it looks positive and tampering with taboos. It is more productive and more exciting to paint thins such as cuteness, pinkness, tranquillity, pleasure, happiness, sweet feelings into black. That is why I like to touch the most delicate and sweet places. 

The names of your past works are quite startling and striking such as: ‘Your Family is a Lie My Child (Senin Ailen Bir Yalan Yavrum)’, ‘My Children Wouldn't Do Such a Thing (Benim Çocuklarım Yapmaz)’, ‘I Will Never Give Birth Again (Bir Daha doğurmayacağım)’, ‘That Dinner (O Akşam Yemeği)’, ‘When Your Comes Home Tonight (Akşam Baban Gelince)’ . When you are underlining the cliché related to family, you are actually draw attention to problems that many artists avoid: what are the reaction you get?

The subject matter of your series named "Home Sweet Home" opened in x-ist on 30th April is also marriage and life at home. This new exhibition, which is a follow-up of your previous exhibition "Your Family is a Lie My Child (Senin Ailen Bir Yalan Yavrum)", is also not eluding to probe the issues, which are avoided to be verbalized.

This exhibition, maybe just like family, started over from domestic life. I like to cover a woman sitting on a sofa with mud when she could have been sitting on that sofa in a cute way. It is said that home is a beautiful, comfortable place with promising health, but for me it is loneliness, point where I get separated from nature and contains a side that is sick.
 
I like doing concept exhibitions. One of the subject matters of my next exhibition is possibly going to be business world and another one will be the streets. I enjoy holding title exhibitions - those titles pull me togetherç

The exhibition can be visited in x-ist until 24th May.