Sabire Susuz, 1967

Born in 1967 in Kütahya, Sabire Susuz completed her undergraduate and graduate studies at Dokuz Eylül University, Department of Painting. In 2007 she received her Diploma of Proficiency in Art from the Department of Graphics of the same university.

Sabire Susuz, who continues to work in Izmir, produced silkscreen prints early in her career due to their reproducibility. However, recently she has changed direction, integrating reproduced pieces into a single whole. Susuz, who also studied biology at university for a short period, uses the fact that the organ parts she examined at that time under an electron microscope are actually formed of millions of identical cells in her later works. She sees an association between the way the cells form an organ with the way people from her immediate circle shape her identity. She produces collages using clothing labels she gathers from her friends and family. Her self-portraits are formed using pieces from their lives; their subject is not obvious at first, but comes into focus when looked at from different angles. In these works, Susuz references people outside of herself, thus realizing her jump from the individual to the social level.

In her work “Shopping” the artist draws attention to popular culture, using as her point of departure the phenomenon of fashion. She attempts to question visually, through the use of clothing labels, a form of existence that is limited to brand names and artificial values. Maintaining that clothes bought for their brands, and identities acquired through brand names, will end up looking makeshift on a person, the artist fastens clothing labels to one another with pins. Through the blank background that would remain were the pins removed and the pieces fell on the floor, Susuz wants us to reflect on the fact that an identity acquired through brand names is transient in nature.