A Woman of Vision

 

Essay 43. A WOMAN OF VISION

By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol

IPEK DENIZLI derives her iconography from various wellsprings of inspiration - mostly from styles that emerged during the postmodernist period. Gestural abstraction and Graffiti art are the styles Ipek's paintings have marked kinship with. While she admires Vincent Van Gogh and Frida Kahlo who are both figurative painters, Ipek chose to create works entirely distinct from theirs.

I mentioned the word 'postmodernist'. What exactly is Postmodernism? Postmodernism is an eclectic movement that embraces not only painting, but also literature, film, photography, and performance, video, conceptual, and installation art. Also categorized as postmodernist are the successive art styles that sprouted after the heyday of Abstract Expressionism.

Pop Art, which was a reaction against Abstract Expressionism's negation of recognizable image is postmodern. And so are Neo-expressionism, Graffiti, and feminist art. Unlike other schools or styles of the past, Postmodernism is nebulous, having no distinct form or philosophy of its own. It is an 'anything goes' movement where practitioners even appropriated images from academic paintings from the 19th century and earlier, and situated them in a new contemporary context.

Ipek is a postmodernist. She is because of her propensity for turning out graffiti-like paintings that have letters and numbers painted quite haphazardly on them. One painting even has her birthdate, 14061982, written prominently on it, which was perhaps her way of celebrating the occasion. The set of numbers painted on her canvases apparently pertains to years, and were put there to mark Ipek's artistic journey through time. Aside from her use of letters and numbers, Ipek also incorporated in her paintings collages, printed images, an outline of a fish, white lotus flowers floating on the surface of a polychromatic pond - and as a paean perhaps to feminism - looped scarlet ribbons and outlines of crimson lips.

Ipek Denizli was born on June 14, 1982 in Nicosia, Cyprus. She grew up in a village called Lapta. Her father was a traffic policeman and her mother a primary school teacher. An aunt, a published writer, has three books to her name.

Ipek's childhood was idyllic and ideal. She relates that her parents like to grow their own vegetables and bake their own bread. Even though her parents have no artistic leaning themselves, they were supportive of Ipek's creative urge. They never tried to curb her habit, which she began doing when she was five years old, of doing charcoal drawings all over the house. Her father also used to bring the family along to see the cultural and historical sites around Cyprus. These trips further heightened Ipek's creative awareness and desire to be an artist.

Ipek received her bachelor's degree In Art Education and also her Art and Design training at the Gazi University in Turkey. She also earned her Master's degree there and is now working on her Doctorate at Near East University in Cyprus. Ipek is currently an art teacher at the Lefkosa Anatolian High School of Fine Arts, and paints after her classes in her studio/gallery in the basement of their house, which used to be the room of her grandmother. A restless woman with multiple talents, Ipek - aside from being a curator - is into Performance Art too, in emulation of another of her idols, Joseph Beuys. A woman of vision, Ipek said that she busies herself nowadays setting up an International Women Artists Museum in her country.