“Life is Beautiful in Love” (West Hollywood, 2016)
In 2016, I wrote this phrase in Arabic on a public art board in West Hollywood, known as “Happy Walls”:
الحياة جميلة في العشق
(Life is Beautiful in Love)
At the time, my home country was experiencing a wave of bombings. One of them had just struck near the Sultanahmet Mosque in Istanbul. Although I was thousands of kilometers away, my heart was with Istanbul. Meanwhile, Islamophobia was rising fast in the West, with terrorism increasingly associated with Muslim communities.
That’s why I wrote a message of love in Arabic script in a public space —
To say: life is beautiful not through hate, but through love.
This was more than graffiti.
It was a visual act of resistance —
A reminder of the healing power of words.
I chose to heal.
Religious wars should have stayed in the Middle Ages.
This century deserves something sweeter.
This video is part of a street art project where I created gold coin-style Atatürk portrait stickers and placed them across various cities around the world.
It was recorded in Williamsburg, New York, during the time of the Armory Show, and was even featured on the wall of a local gallery.
Atatürk’s visionary leadership belongs in the same sentence as global icons of intellect and creation — which is why I used this quote by Bill Clinton:
“Shakespeare wrote, Einstein thought, Atatürk built.”
This piece was both a tribute to Turkish modernism and an attempt to refresh collective memory through public art.
Art can build a golden bridge between the past and the present.
🍰 Sweets in the Monastery – Tuzla Yacht Club (2011)
Location: Tuzla Yacht Club, Istanbul
In 2011, I had the opportunity to exhibit my dessert sculptures at the Tuzla Yacht Club, located in Istanbul’s Tuzla district. This venue, a former monastery restored to serve as a yacht club, provided a serene seaside setting that added a unique dimension to my works.
I installed my oversized dessert sculptures throughout the venue, creating a visual feast that contrasted the allure of sweets with the historical ambiance of the space. The integration of my works with the stone walls and sea view of the venue bridged the past and present, offering viewers a multifaceted experience.
Public Art Mural – Candy Canes Under the Bridge (2011)
Location: Mecidiyekoy, Istanbul, Turkey
Dimensions: 7m x 20m and 5m x 20m walls
Back in 2011, I turned two massive concrete walls under Istanbul’s busiest overpass into a visual paradox — sugar canes holding up the weight of the city.
The mural consisted of **seven oversized candy canes**, referencing the symbolic power of the number 7 across cultures.
Sweet yet structural, fragile yet foundational — the mural challenged how we perceive strength, support, and public space.
Looking back 14 years later, it was my first real intervention into the urban fabric — playful but deeply conceptual, much like everything that would follow.
My First Solo Exhibition (2010)
Before plastic, protest, or data — I arrived with color.
This exhibition, built entirely around acrylic and oil paintings, was a journey through my emotional storms and the illusions of the outer world.
Each canvas was a chapter, each scene a new atmosphere.
Looking back now, I see this show as the first spark of my obsession with material, transformation, and the post-truth realm.