Seha Nur Sarı

Morning at the Çinili Köşk​​​​

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Oil on canvas, 100 × 150 cm, 2020​​​​

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Fatih Sultan Mehmet’s face in his well-known portrait is replaced by a wolf. Deeply rooted in Turkish mythology and cultural memory, the image of the wolf merges with the historical figure’s individual identity, creating a new image at the intersection of the personal and the collective.

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Replacing the face of a historical figure with an animal image embedded in collective memory blurs the boundaries of individual identity. What appears in the portrait is no longer simply Fatih Sultan Mehmet, nor simply a wolf, but a hybrid figure in which history, myth and cultural memory overlap.

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This encounter is part of my relationship with older, shared images that persist beneath the individual. Images that endure within the collective unconscious resurface at different times and in different forms. Here, the image emerges through historical memory, finding a new form at the threshold between an individual face and a collective symbol.