NEVIN ARIG

This is not a selfie

Taking a selfie is an instinctive, almost animalistic act, where we give in to a deep urge to assert ourselves and be seen. The selfie becomes a modern ritual of display, where everyone showcases their beauty, strength, or success like a peacock flaunting its feathers. Behind the screen, we don a shimmering mask, an idealized version of ourselves, adorned with glitter and perfection. We feed on the gaze of others, seeking to prove our worth and popularity through likes and comments. This quest for validation turns into a competition, a way to measure our place in the social hierarchy. The selfie, far from being trivial, reveals our primal need for recognition, for visual dominance in a world where image is king.

Rives Cosmiques

Rives Cosmiques is a collection of brooches and necklaces that are related to the universe. Although cloistered in matter, the shapes and symbols drawn belong to the world and are in communication with the cosmos. Crosses unite the horizontal space and the vertical time, a meeting point between heaven and earth. The star, the alchemical gold, symbolizes our action in the world. Finally, the moon, cosmic mother, and the sun, cosmic father, are among the oldest symbols of humanity. Symbols that appeal to the world of dreams, the imagination, the unconscious, symbol of life and love, master of the heavens, source of all heat and all light.

Sweetness of Life

How will our life be after this unusual period? What is the new "normal life"? What will we need? More softness? A stronger sense of community? Work differently? Enjoy more of the good times in life?

Nordic Light

When I moved from south to north, I learned to celebrate the occasional ray of sunshine and make the most out of nature. These grim conditions tend to elicit a certain curiousness in us, in which we may search for happiness even in darkness. In particular, I found that the soft shapes of snow have the power to capture sunlight in a poetic way.

Hasankeyf

Hasankeyf, in Turkey, is one of the most ancient sites in the world with evidence of human settlements. Dating back 12,000 years, it has been home to virtually every major Mesopotamian civilisation, and it has seen huge transformations across time, from a Byzantine bishopric to an Arab fortress and an outpost in the Ottoman Empire. But all this history is about to be lost. The Republic of Turkey has ordered the construction of a hydroelectric dam that will submerge the ancient town beneath 60 metres of water. The ancient site of Hasankeyf is located on the banks of the Tigris River in South Eastern Turkey, which is not far from the border with Syria. Scheduled for completion by 2019, the Ilisu Dam, which is now under construction 100 kilometres downstream from Hasankeyf, will generate nearly 2% of Turkey’s electricity and create an 11-billion-cubic-meter reservoir, sinking the ancient city and dozens of towns on the Tigris River in the process. In February 2013, Turkey's highest administrative court ordered construction to halt until an environmental impact assessment had been carried out. However, the Turkish government changed the regulation to stop this assessment.Nearly 1,000 miles downstream, communities in southern Iraq will face a different threat from the Ilisu Dam. Nourished by the water of the Tigris, the Mesopotamian marshes may disappear completely once the dam is complete. These Mesopotamian marshes, which once covered one-fifth of modern Iraq's landmass and which have hosted human civilization since ancient Sumer, now sustain the local population through agriculture. Now, all of this is under threat. There won't be any more marsh in Iraq if Ilısu and the other remaining dams in Turkey's South Eastern Anatolia Project are built. Iraqi officials estimate that the project will dehydrate 670,000 hectares of cultivable land in the country. Sadly, it has become common practice to put money and power ahead of the preservation of our history and of our planet.

Between the lines and layers

“My interest is in experience that is wordless and silent, and in the fact that this experience can be expressed for me in art which is also wordless and silent"
Agnes Martin

Each person has a colour palette like a signature expressing joy and sadness, freedom and captivity, beauty and madness ... I'd like to find those essentials that lie between the lines of a written, in the subtle shades of a sunset, in the silence of someone's expresses and understands me in my silence and only with my colours that I can be identify ... at every moment of life. However in this series, the main idea was to express an instinctive perception of each lines of life into material, form, and and colour as a jewellery.

Hidden dream 2018

There are so many small moments of beauty in our everyday life.
But we don’t recognize them and even when we do recognize them, we tend to unconsciously delete them and forget what we’ve seen. Ultimately I wanted to explore the essential; to try to find hidden beauty, simple and pure forms but also peace, away from the vague and austere everyday life. Capture the twinkling fragments of a stone, rejoice the subtleties found in colours, start to create and work in all carefreeness before reason consumes inspiration and illusions. It is a kind of “close-up” to ordinary moments through colour and beauty that fills me with enthusiasm in my work at the moment.