Resistance on Istiklal Street

Canan

CANAN (1970, Istanbul) lives and works in Istanbul.An artist who has been continuing her art practices since 1998 and who defines herself as a feminist, CANAN examines symbols within the collective consciousness and the subconscious, and reflects on how these symbols shape human behaviors and relationships. Symbols are a timeless, non-geographical and common language that mark our daily lives and that define our relationship with each other and with history. Symbols are a common language, for which the meaning ranges from the "highest art" to daily objects, such as emojis in our phones, to those in politics, humanity and art history, but one that is mostly involved with the transfer of beauty, human feelings and thoughts. Through symbols, we often have an understanding and perception of past times from a contemporary perspective. In her most recent works, CANAN continues to work on the cognitive, intuitive and imaginative effects of images, which are at times frightening, and at times definitive of beauty, nurtured by nature and symbolized through perceived meanings. Although half human, half animal divine symbols remind us of the evolutionary process, these symbols can have shifting meanings in different time periods. During one period, Poseidon can be perceived as an angry god who causes famine, or as the protector of the seas in another one. In the progress of time, the witches turn into healers, or into mysterious women feared due to their power, wise woman in cartoons, to symbols of evil. How we perceive a symbol is dependent upon personal and social perspectives. The artist continues to employ symbols that have a negative perception, and to give them positive connotations in her works, in order to study the intuitive, emotional or intellectual purification of the human soul by means of images, in a similar way to letters and music, and to enable its communication with itself and with others.