REFUGE
This body of work explores ideas of enclosure, ambiguity, refuge and the human body, using spaces from Cappadocia's ancient underground cities and architectural motifs from its early churches, carved inside the rocky mounds that dot the landscape.
Many peoples traversed and invaded Turkey’s central Anatolia, and I am fascinated by what they left behind. Groups including the Hittites and the earliest Christians carved secret underground cities in which they and their animals could live for up to three months to survive attack. The soft volcanic tufa hardened after being carved out leaving organic, strangely shaped spaces and orifaces. Archeologists might know the function of many of these spaces and orifices, but to me they remain mysterious, appealing, and visceral.
While the church fragments probably originated in later centuries than the earliest underground cities, they represent another aspect of the culture of Anatolian peoples, another reality from a different era. Integrating patterned fragments of architecture suggests the role of the spiritual, the intellectual, and references the memory of lost peoples.