Neş’e Erdok, 1940

After graduating from Neşet Günal’s studio at the Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts painting department, Neş’e Erdok studied the language, literature, history, civilization, and art history of Spain in Madrid. Since the 1970s, Erdok has adopted a realistic approach to the figure in her paintings, exploring issues of identity, class, and gender in highly urbanized environments. Her strong powers of observation are displayed in works that combine the daily human condition with the infinitely diverse forms of imagery and representation possible in the discipline of painting. Her subject is her own body, but she also draws on her memory and visual archive. By portraying people, she has seen in her everyday life, she creates scenes on canvas that are in concrete and realistic dialogue with quotidian living. Erdok explores human typologies in a sociological context. In her work titled “Shoe Shiner”, Erdok depicts a shoe shiner who gives the work its title. This painting belongs to a series about street vendors she frequently encountered in the public space. Erdok prefers to keep the corporal attributes of the characters she encounters in her daily life plain and neutral. She conveys references to their identities through objects, clothes, and stances.