What makes your art valuable is that you've been depicting a reduced world in your works for a long time now. The fact that you accomplish reduction and create works that keep a distance from story-telling and easy-perception while not falling into the trap of being decorative, proves how strong the intellectual basis of your approach to art is. All these qualities emphasize an aesthetic that allows us to establish an intuitive dialogue with the works. This is especially apparent in the works “In Full Flood”, “Human”, “The Land” and in many of your drawings and collages. I'll touch on these works again in different contexts, but let's start with your attitude regarding a reduced aesthetic in which story-telling is kept in the background. How do you accomplish to put so much distance to narration in your works; is this an intentional decision?

Narration and story-telling has always been a part of my practice. Maybe it's why I'm inspired by arts that are based on story-telling such as movies, literature and folklore, however I'm avoiding providing a complete and linear narration. I find it more interesting to focus on just one moment or a single element of a story. It's important to accomplish reduction and to refine my works as much as possible – I'm trying to create works that are freed from excesses. In other words, if the existence of an element does not make a difference, or if the element can easily be replaced by something else, then I consider it an unripe work. I feel that each piece, color, material and form in a work has to have a strong connection to one another. For this reason, my works undergo a tight refinement process during their creation, and no element is added just because I'd like to think, do or see it that way. When a work ripens and reaches a reduced state after such a process –and the same things is also valid for a series or a show– it reaches its most powerful state. Naturally, the fact that I'm talking about the creation process in the context of relationships between elements and pieces makes obvious my close relationship to the practice of collage. The act of concealing –especially concealing something while at the same time showing it– was at the center of my practice 6-7 years ago. Even though I've gradually distanced myself from this idea of concealing-showing, I guess its traces still exist in my practice. Concealing coexists with concepts such as uncanniness, shame, mystery, protection, the desire to know, therefore it offers a rich basis. And works that are concealed, that don't give themselves away easily, demand an active viewer. This is quite an important point. If I provide viewers with every bit of information about my works, while at the same asking them to spend time with the works and experience them, I'd have deprived them of the meaning that they'd have discovered or built by themselves and of the intellectual and emotional pleasure they'd have gotten from it. After all, as they create their own understanding of a work, they create the work itself.

“The Wonder Book of Animals” that's shown at the Sabancı Museum is the work in which the story is most obvious. Though other works are closed to an easy way of perception, this work opens itself in a limited fashion and shows signs of storytelling. On the other hand, the closed nature I've just mentioned doesn't imply that there's no storytelling in the background of other works – it's just that these messages aren't emphasized or made too obvious. And this opens up an –emotional– space for viewers, and pushes them to act. The aesthetics of the distance in between! Now, let's return to the aforementioned series in which story-telling is in the foreground – what's its story?

The series takes its name from an encyclopedia of animals entitled “The Wonder Book of Animals” printed in the UK in the 60s. I'm using some images and texts from this book. I'm trying to divert away from the intended narration of the book –which is usually based on telling how cute, frightening, weird or beautiful an animal is–, focusing instead on the unintentional narration that exists between the lines. I criticize zoology in a fashion similar to how anthropology is criticized for being western-minded and otherizing. Anthropocentrism and speciesism are the fields I deal with the most. As an example, I can talk about the process of creating a drawing from this series: an image of a baby panda brought from China which was already dead at the time the book was printed, is presented with these words: “Though it might be looking sad, don't be mistaken, it's actually just thinking! If you just knew what a clown this cute animal is! We're lucky to have hosted this valuable animal at our London Zoo. Even though it has died –they don't live long in our climate– you can still purchase a trinket of this cute little creature.” This text and its accompanying image can be seen in relation to many subjects such as the roots of colonialism, the dominating western view on other species, zoo management and the historical change of the language used when talking about animals. The human authority stating that a panda –which has died while on display far from its home– wasn't actually sad at all...

Animals are prominent in your artworks. It's no doubt related to the problematization of the concept of civilization. Aside from all these concepts, I'm interested in the magnificent formal power of “The Land”. Shown first in your solo show at C.A.M in 2013 and then at Akbank Sanat in 2014 where you won the Akbank Contemporart Artists Award, this video work shows the fur of sheep gradually turning into smoke. I find this smoke important, because it's quite a powerful gesture of abstraction. It takes over everything. I see this smoke again in the water in your video “In Full Flood”. It's also visible in “All the Dry Places and All the Floating Things”... How did this smoke come to be, and what's its importance for you?

In my works smoke/clouds/fog appear again and again in different forms. This isn't the result of a decision I've made. The image of smoke has gradually become a part of my practice almost without me noticing it. For a long time I've been thinking about the similarities between things and living things –such as clouds resembling sheep, or the back of an horse resembling a mound– and the strategies developed by beings during their evolution to imitate their surroundings. That's why I'm interested in the non-static structures of smoke, clouds and fog; the fact that they create countless images each moment. These forms continuously produce images of their materiality while at the same time having the power to change the image of the things they fall upon, turning the perception of the owner of this image inside out. In other words, there's a difference between seeing a dog on a sunny day, and seeing that same dog half-concealed in fog. What the fog shows by the act of concealing, in a sense, moves away from the light of the conscious, towards the darkness of the subconscious. I think the membrane that's assumed to exist between consciousness and subconsciousness is quite porous. Fog is just like the metaphor or the representation of this membrane. We could maybe even look at the powerful relationship between the fog and the uncanny; it's familiar yet alien. I think this is what the fog as an indispensable element of the uncanny atmosphere is. By the way, I was both surprised and delighted by your emphasis on smoke. I'm going to have a show with Ülgen Semerci at Operation Room at the beginning of June, which will be focusing on the phenomenon of fog, the things it conceals and the varieties thereof: urban fog and nature fog. The show is titled “In the Fog”.

Then smoke or fog as a metaphor of concealment seems to widen its boundaries, and it keeps spreading. It's exciting to hear that you're going to have another show with Ülgen Semerci following the “Flooded” show at the end of 2014 at her own studio in Arnavutköy. In Elif Gül Tirben's interview with both of you (published at m-est), you say that your practices are very different but you have a strong dialogue with each other. It's quite important that you work together though you're living in different cities, that you can get together though you have different approaches, that dialogue, friendship, valuing something and spending time are in fact the potential of production itself. Actually, Ülgen's works also possess this quality of keeping their distance to storytelling that I've mentioned earlier. Her works give the sense of a sudden movement and a fast flow of time, while yours feature a more controlled movement and a slower sense of time – however they're similar in that they both require going beyond the straightforward way of looking. How did your friendship with Ülgen evolve into a collaboration, and what does this dialog mean to you?

Yes, fog seems to keep spreading. I've met Ülgen as I was taking drawing classes as a high school student, in preparation for studying fine arts. And we've kept in contact ever since, though we've never lived in the same city. The various topics concerning what it could mean to create art, what kind of art we would practice, how our aesthetic and intellectual tendencies evolve, have become a part of our dialogue. We have taken part in a guest-artist program and realized a few shows between 2010-11, but these were projects in which the identities of the other partaking artists were emphasized and ours drawn back. However the “Flooded” show of 2014 was the result of just the two of us working together on a project. And because the show took place at Ülgen's studio, the manager of a gallery or a curator weren't involved, who usually provide a mechanism of control and support. This has both increased our responsibility to a large extent and provided us with the kind of freedom we'd never experienced before. In other words, it was a new thing for us in many ways. As we were designing the project, we've decided that the best way would be to plan the show around a common element of installation while realizing the works personally. The show we're working on right now, entitled “In the Fog” and to be held at Operation Room in June, is also the result of a similar way of working. The flood of the first show will be replaced by fog this time.

Nature and its magnificence –this could be the magnificence of an ant, or fog, flood, witchgrass– are a source of inspiration for contemporary artists just as they were influential in the history of art, such as for the naturalists of the 17th century or the romanticists of the 19th century. Growing problems of the city, pressure of the modern capitalist life and the great problem of man with regard to civilization cause artists to look at nature more often, relate to it and create works that focus on it. There are artists who deal with problems of cities from an urban point of view, who “point at” them directly; but on the other hand the number of artists who relate to nature at a fantastic and –in a way– romantic level, like you and Deniz Üster –whose works I like very much–, is rapidly increasing. These ways of seeing nature, this desire to relate to it naturally brings with it a multi-level regime of perception. There are very special artists who are good examples of this attitude, such as Matthew Barney, Laure Prouvost, Canan Tolon and Richard Long. Looking at nature and its wild and poetic art requires touching, listening and, beyond these, an intuitive relation. Nature is a significant resource for your art as well.

I find interesting the areas in which the boundaries between the nature and the civilization or technology become blurred and flow into each other. For example, I've been getting my inspiration from zoology, biohacking, primatology and nature history. These are all sciences that intend to understand, transform, classify and maybe appropriate nature. I'm trying to form my own practice by sailing through all these seas of information and various approaches to thinking. After all, the artistic practice I aim to arrive at is both very personal and not personal at all – it can contain this duality. By the way, Deniz Üster and Laure Prouvost are fellow students of mine from different schools, therefore it's very interesting that you talk about them. The reasons nature and the relationship of mankind to nature appear in art in maybe a different way now than in the past, can be found in the destructive relationship of dominance, the anthropocent resulting from that, or in the human era. It's because themes like the climate crisis, new models of farming, ethical diet, extinction of species are becoming central in visual arts.

So you're going to continue focusing on the issues of the strong signals of ecology, the struggle of the mankind with nature and the resulting disquietude of civilization in your next show with Ülgen Semerci, “In the Fog”. There seems to be a direct connection between your interests in zoology, biohacking, primatology and nature history and the fact that drawing is the basis of your art, just like a nature scientist. Even though you utilize a lot of different media, drawing is prioritized in your art. Is drawing also a part of your daily life – do you carry a sketchbook with you?

Always. The sketchbook is the most important part of my practice. I plan all my works on these notebooks. They're filled with notes and drawings that function as notes. It's very important that I have one with me at all times. A studio isn't always approachable concerning time, distance and money. Notebooks however function like a studio, anywhere, any time.