when I was small, my mother used to do a lot of embroidery, lace-making, crochet, knitting and, on top of that, new clothes as a seamstress. I still remember the sound of her sewing machine in her room. She had learnt most of from her mother: it was skills to pass on for women from my granny’s homeland Anatolia (modern Turkey), to prepare their dowry as young girls and then run their household as wives. I wanted to learn these skills too, especially embroidery and lace-making, but they refused to teach me because I was a boy! But I recently realised how connected is my own way of making art with all this: everything I do is always with so much detail which, although sometimes drives me crazy, I still love it - a strange balance between a calm, meditative state and an intense, even painfully laborious process.
So, when I got in my hands a new ballpoint pen in 2022, I started drawing with it almost maniacally one night of insomnia. But as I kept doing this, I gradually slowed down, so without realising, ending up to my familiar way of drawing: small accurate hand movements with the pen, as if I’m doing embroidery…