Gözde İlkin, 1981

Born in 1981 in Kütahya, Gözde İlkin studied painting at Mimar Sinan University and earned her master’s degree from Marmara University. She lives and works in Istanbul.

In her works, which she embroiders on fabric, İlkin depicts crowds of people. Sometimes she includes acrylic paint and different pieces of fabric and leaves 'unsewn' threads hanging loose. The pieces of fabric are found objects and often have a motif on them, which are usually botanical, colored, caricaturized designs. The figures in some of her works have odd anatomical features: pieces of flesh growing from some of the heads bind these figures together creating amorphous anatomical structures emerging from intermingled bodies. These formations reveal the social statuses within the depicted group.

The 2011 work “Hunt – The True Face of Civilizations throughout History” is a good example of this praxis. It is a story 'written' on a found curtain with dainty floral motifs. A group of men go hunting with their rifles and dogs, but the “prey” they hang off their guns is actually an extension of the head of one of the gang. Another element repeated in İlkin’s work is the absence of facial details of the figures; therefore, their identity remains indistinct.