Seha Nur Sarı
A Nocturnal Play of the Macedonian Sun in the Library of Alexandria
Oil on canvas, 100 × 150 cm, 2022
Alexander the Great’s face is replaced by the owl, an animal associated with the goddess of wisdom. Behind him are scrolls evoking the Library of Alexandria, bringing together selected texts from philosophy, mythology, literature and mathematics. Moonlight illuminates these layers of knowledge through and around the figure of the owl.
Here, wisdom is not associated with light alone. The owl is an animal capable of seeing in the dark; it inhabits the threshold between light and darkness, knowledge and the unknown. Throughout history, the same figure has also been associated with ill omen and approaching death. The account of an owl calling before Caesar’s death creates an invisible connection between this image and the preceding work in the series.
The texts on the scrolls raise questions of vision, light, human will, the gods, fate, reason and order. Here, philosophy and myth become not answers that eliminate the unknown, but ways through which human beings attempt to look into their own darkness. To see, the eye alone is not enough; light is also necessary. Yet light does not eliminate darkness entirely. It makes something within it visible.
The owl’s gaze remains precisely at this threshold: between the known and the unknown, light and darkness, consciousness and what continues to exist beneath it.
