Nil Aksoy

Tecnica: Digital

Anno: 2025

Dimensione: 42 x 59.4 cm

Descrizione: This piece was created as a reconstruction of someone I loved deeply—my mother—at the age I am now. Growing up, she would constantly ask me whether I had drawn her, whether her face lived somewhere in my sketchbook. After losing her in 2019, that question stayed with me, echoing in moments of silence. I never had a clear photograph of her from when she was my age, so this artwork is built from fragments: vague memories, family stories, and the few images that survived. It is not an exact portrait—it is a translation of longing.

The grayscale palette is deliberate. After her passing, the world seemed to drain itself of color, as if the emotional spectrum I once inhabited collapsed into shades of black and white. This shift is symbolically tied to the lyrics written across the figure’s hair: “I see a red door and I want it painted black…” It was a song we used to listen to together—one that once filled the house with joy. Over time, its meaning transformed. What used to feel lively and playful became an elegy, mirroring the way grief quietly rewrites everything it touches.

By integrating the handwriting into the hair, I wanted the music—and the memory of her singing—to feel woven into the body of the work, like something impossible to separate from identity. The figure’s expression carries a sense of distance, suspended between presence and absence, a reminder of how memory both preserves and distorts. It is a portrait not of a face, but of an emotional inheritance.

This artwork is, at its core, an attempt to answer her old question. It is me finally saying: “Yes, I drew you. I draw you still.” It is an exploration of how loss reshapes visual language, how grief alters the colors we see, and how art can become a bridge between what remains and what has already slipped away.