In the work Beklerim Sezer drew a paralel to the beauty of hair and branches of a tree. The branches of the helizonic willow look a lot ike curly hair. Rapunzel had thrown her hair down in order to let her lover climb up to the place where she was locked away from him. The artist made a ladder from the curly willow braches to express the need for beauty in order for the survival of the species. She is also a beekeeper and so has many of bees in her garden, when seeing how the pollination takes place by means of attraction through smell and color she became convinced that beauty is a necessity for survival.The work is on beauty as a need to survive as species
Maria Sezer Celebrates the Dance of Beauty - Nancy Atakan, June 2009
What fascinates me is to see artwork that reveals the fantasies, knowledge, beliefs, investigations and thought processes of an artist. Of course, none of this is straightforward or totally obvious to either the spectator or even to the artist, but if one follows a particular artist’s career, images appear and disappear, ideas are repeated in various forms, sometimes approached directly and sometimes indirectly, but meaning emerges from the zigzags and curves. Maria Sezer’s exhibition at Apel Gallery brings together past tendances with present life experiences while giving a glimpse of the future. While I can see reoccuring images of seeds and natural growth from her earliest paintings repeated here, the story told in this exhibition began about four years ago at a workshop/conference (Maria give the exact name of this) at Mersin Universtiy. Like in Istanbul, Mersin also has its Kizkalesi. Maria became fascinated with this archetypical story of male domination hidden behind the idea of protection, fathers trying to protect themselves, their honor, by hiding their young daughters from male lust. Since in contemporary Turkey attempts to protect/dominate often ends tragically in Tore Cinnayet or forceful veiling of young women, in Maria’s opinion this myth continues to be relevant.
Maria first touched on the theme of protection through camouflage or veiling, in her work called Kitabı-ı Zokak. Since the Ottomans on campaign used the colorfully appliqued and embroidered tent-wall , Zokak, to hide their activities and intentions from the enemy, Maria constructed her interpretation of a zokak embellished with stylized plant imagery to symbolize the barriers people construct to protect and separate themselves from others. In her present exhibition, she expands on this theme by referring to the fairytale, Rapunzel. Rapunzel’s lover climbed up her long hair to enter through the window of her prison. Rapunzel used her beautiful long strong hair to lure him to her. In Maria’s opinion, going against nature, trying to hide what cannot be hidden, inevitably ends in failure. No matter how hard a father tries to hide his young daughter, even though it may end unhappily, she will find a way to escape. In one of Maria’s installation/sculptures, a ladder made from a substance resembling the bark of a tree leads to a cloth cloud while another ladder leads to a male fantasy of the female body, sometimes long almost rope-like black hair acts as a ladder. Sometimes the hair cascades to write the word ‘gel’ or ‘beklerim’, the title of this exhibition. This title no doubt refers to Maria’s interest in life changes. Throughout her career, Maria has explored the concept of time as reflected in the natural processes of fertilization, conception, birth, life and death. She sees beauty as a way for nature to assure propreation. An attempt to hide the beauty of a young woman interferes with this natural process. Animal life and plant life ensures its continuation by means of attraction through smell, color and shape. In her installation that includes a film of wisteria being pollinated by bees, she shows this process. The unattractive, wrinkled colorless dead flowers are dispersed around the vibrant video of abundant violet flowers and buzzing bees. Beauty disappears. Attraction is temporary. Youth is ephemeral. No doubt, the title of this exhibition, recalls inevitability of death. Whether we wait passively, climb ladders, work like bees, or actively accept, old age and death inevitably come.
This exhibition gives an example of an artist who brings her whole being into her work. Maria raises bees, cares for a large garden, protects all types of animals, insects and reptiles, wrote a thesis at Mimar Sinan University about earth art, explores all forms of labor intensive crafts from weaving natural materials to ceramics to engraving, teaches at Isik University, and is dealing with becoming a middle aged artist, woman, mother, and wife. While age implies deterioration for many careers, the artist who remains open, experimental and flexible can continue to flow amd evolve. Maria is an artist who works with natural materials to make her extremely labor intensive handmade art work. She is a strong, independent person, quite capable of existing anywhere in the world who choses to explore traditional feminine artistic techniques such as sewing and weaving. I can image that she will continue well into her later life with these explorations, will find new imagery for her lived experiences, and create larger and larger instalations/sculptures following the role model bequeathed to us from Louise Bourgeois.
No doubt, being a woman artist over the age of fifty has affected her choice of subject matter. She points out that young girls become women with the consent of the male members of the family and society. She realizes that girls are often punished for being attractive and have to deny their innate/passive urge to show this beauty. But, primarily Maria wants to point out that as women grow older they become strongly aware that mankind cannot exist without this beauty. Even women who are not completely dominated by a father or husband, spend 40 years being angry about being seen as a sex object in advertisements or on the streets and another 40 years being angry because they have been replaced or discarded for a newer model. At a point in life that age brings a natural loss of beauty, while understanding the urge to stay young and attractive as long as possible, Maria is offended by the bombardment of the advertisement industry with impossible and artifical hopes for eternal youth and a denial of the inevitability of old age and death. She wants to remind other women that this situation (durum) is also natural. This process of aging must be accepted and that women can celebrate and support daughters and grand daughters who now experience this time of beauty and appeal.
