Daydream Nation: Reflection on Feyzan Alasya
Melis Dumlu
There are languages too small for the contradictions of human nature.
Feyzan Alasya is one of the artists who believes myth is the only form expansive enough to hold those contradictions and to connect them to today.
For her, myth seems to be architecture. A timeless container capable of carrying contemporary emotion without flattening it.
When she uses a mythical symbol, she is not retelling an old story. She is placing a very present intensity inside a traditional framework. Myth becomes a structure where fragments can gather without being simplified. It allows her to bring pieces together in a way that resists linear narration.
Every thing, she says, searches for its own wholeness.
This sentence feels like the center of her practice.
Daily life arrives in fragments. A conversation. A political tension. A routine gesture. A dream that lingers longer than it should. In her words, our lives are nothing more than traces and sections, continuously attempting to gather what is always dispersing. We are constantly searchın for that wholeness.
Her paintings are not solutions to that dispersion. They are stations. Temporary places where fragments meet.
This becomes visible in the way her compositions unfold. Figures lean, bend, press against one another. Animals move through human bodies. Flames emerge without origin. Light explodes without clear promise of salvation or destruction. The space refuses a single-point perspective. Instead, it folds, fractures, and overlaps.
In works like Sırtlan Elinde (In Hyena’s Hand) , perspectives collapse into overlapping realities. The painting’s center pulses with a burst of golden rays, an emblem that could signal enlightenment or destruction. It is never entirely clear. Around it, bureaucratic figures carry scrolls. Citizens march in synchronization. It is through her relationship to these fragments and through ours that the hyena becomes visible in the composition as a loaded presence.
Her ability to make the emotional architecture creates the vibration between solemnity and satire, between past and present, between dream and dread.
These paintings are informed by subconscious logic, what she calls the inner script of dreams.
Her surrealism is not escapism. It is diagnostic.
By exaggerating the discontinuities of dream, she exposes the discontinuities already embedded in everyday life. The absurdities of dreams mirror the fractures of the social and political sphere. The mythic is not outside reality; it reveals its deeper mechanics.
At first glance, her scenes feel theatrical. Not theatrical as spectacle, but as staging.
Sometimes they look back at us, demanding that we account for our presence. Sometimes we become voyeurs inside their dream logic.
And then there is her refusal to define. She says ‘Art is freed when it escapes definitions.’
For Feyzan, every declaration births its opposite. Every form generates its counter-form. To fix meaning too early is to limit the work’s potential to become something else. Her paintings remain in motion because she allows them to remain processual. Fragments wait. Collages form according to internal intensity rather than urgency.
In an art world used to seeing immediacy, recognizability, and stylistic branding, her works feel like breath held underwater. They do not rush to mirror the scrollable symbols of contemporary life. They metabolize them.
The merging of myth and everyday life is not new. Yet in her case, it is not an aesthetic strategy. It is an existential method. The canvas doesn't need to resolve the fragments because they are already passed through her interior process. What we see is not chaos waiting for closure, it is intensity that has found a temporary form.
And the emotional residue of that release remains visible. Her internal intensity does not disappear once the painting is finished. It migrates into the figures. It waits for the viewer to bring their own fragments into the field.
The bond she speaks of with the viewer completes the circuit. The work is not finished in isolation. It extends.
She does not offer a final narrative. She offers a space where wholeness is a practice rather than a destination.
https://www.melisdumlu.com/essays/daydream-nation-reflection-on-feyzan-alasya
ArtDog, 2025
Semra Dursun
KUN Art Space, a contemporary art gallery in the Çukurova region, hosts Feyzan Alasya's solo exhibition, "7067 STREET." The exhibition, which intertwines the past and the present, hovers between dreams and reality, and presents a unity built on images that overflow from the subconscious, questions the essence of life, which appears ordinary in daily routines but transforms into a vast ocean when it gains depth. We spoke with Feyzan Alasya about "7067 STREET," an exhibition that refers not only to a physical space but also to a space where art and thought flow freely, where images come together and acquire new meanings.7067 STREET is the name of the street where my studio is located. I've been living and working in Bodrum's Turgutreis district for nearly ten years. I found it fitting to choose this name in honor of the time I spend there, summer and winter. In my new creative process, which began in late 2022, my studio and its immediate surroundings—its streets, its human interactions, its joyful and sometimes distressing nature—have influenced me and have become incorporated into my paintings, particularly in small frames, as spatial passages. Furthermore, I wanted to emphasize, and perhaps even celebrate, the value of time spent focused and productive. Thus, the exhibition title emerged naturally.
Could you elaborate a bit on your creations in the exhibition? What kind of work do you present to the audience? What inspires you in your creative process? What inspires you?
I believe that myths, along with the artworks, films, literature, and ideas that feed upon them, best describe and emotionally connect us to this world and human nature, our unchanging ill fortune, duality and dialectics, and the ocean-like universe. Therefore, I also convey the story of humanity, a collection of contradictions—my own story—through this medium. All the events and social traumas we experience or are involved in in our daily lives are transformed into production through this surreal language.
Figures, atmosphere, movement, and gestures shape my compositions. Layered spaces can be present. I often compile sketches I draw on paper, which are much more raw than those on canvas. I can use these immediately or spread them out over time, creating collages of different sketches based on my inner intensity.
You state that in the exhibition, you emphasize the seemingly mundane yet profound aspects of dreams, myths, and daily routines. How do you create the transitions between these images?
Everything seeks its own integrity; the flow of life in our minds generally continues by connecting fragments. As an artist, these routines and segments of daily life are part of my emotional side, and therefore, they are part of me. All of these are incorporated into collages on the canvas, and when the painting is finished, my emotional integrity is fulfilled. I would say there is no conclusion; there is an ongoing process and stages. Ultimately, our entire lives are comprised of traces and fragments; we are constantly striving to integrate something that is falling apart. We strive for completion and a sense of fulfillment.
Everything about our lives creates a space. Our relationship with a person or an animal, a concept, an idea, an event—everything creates different spaces and fragments.
I occasionally take notes from my dreams to create contrasts and piece together fragments in my paintings. Over time, this led me to realize that even the most terrifying dreams contain hidden humor. The dream's inherent fiction and logic began to inform my compositions. The absurdity and disconnectedness of the plot made me aware of the spatial and semantic gaps in real life. In this way, even the depictions of simple daily routines have taken on a fantastical language in the compositions.
In terms of the techniques and style you use in your exhibition, you prefer a combination of classical figurative and imaginative narrative. What led you to this technical choice?
I've worked extensively on figure and portrait painting, in particular. These have brought out the classical, figurative aspects of my painting. Furthermore, because my compositions contain symbolic and imaginative elements, this definition has emerged. I believe they encompass much more than just one definition. However, it was in miniature paintings that I found the courage to use distorted and multiple perspectives in my compositions. The diverse, bright, and sometimes contrasting color schemes in miniatures have influenced my palette.
In addition, the styles of Mannerist, Baroque and Expressionist artists and some German painters associated with socialist realism liberated me, enabled me to break the academic rigidity in technique and guided me in creating imaginary fictions.
In the exhibition bulletin, you use the phrase, “Art becomes free when it escapes definition.” Could you elaborate on this?
I always view artistic production as a process. Everything we say and produce also creates its opposite. This includes what I'm saying to you today, which is meant to further express myself. Therefore, I believe it's necessary to move away from definitive definitions. We should always be open to change. Ultimately, what we create is the product of our lives and a reflection of that journey. We shouldn't resist change and different directions.
What would you like to add?
For me, art is not only a means of communication but also a way of knowing and expressing myself. Every emotion I encounter during the creative process is reflected in my figures and compositions. The connection I establish with the viewer is also a part of this process. I believe that art, by its very nature, is always open to change, and I believe that sharing this process with the viewer is invaluable.
Semra Dursun, March 12, 2025, Contemporary Art/Special Interview
https://artdogistanbul.com/feyzan-alasya-her-sey-kendi-butunlugunu-arar/
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