WAITING FOR MY SOUL: MERT YAVACA SOLO

ARTISTS STATEMENT:
According to a belief, the spirit departs from the body as a dog
goes away unexpectedly. I have no idea when my own spirit left. I have
just understood the time it came back.
I started my frst oiloncanvas series titled Natural Disasters in
early !"## when I focused on my artistic production and aimed to develop
my style. $he series I started after a %uick prelimanary period is of an
experimental %uality. I painted the canvases neither for an exhibition nor
for a competition. &y compositions breathed for the frst time together
with a reasonless urge to create and a fantasy for selfreckoning. &y works
began to turn into faces trying to communicate with me through symbols.
$hey appeared like lost spirits which failed while alive and thus became
imprisoned in the world. 'nly after I had completed Natural Disasters
comprising of six oiloncanvas, I gathered my spirit came back.
$here is an anecdote concerning &exican tourist guides. $hey stop
abruptly and take a rest in the middle of the forest on their way to take the
tourists to Inca temples. (hen tourists want to learn the reason why they
have stopped, the guide replies) they have walked too fast for their souls
to catch up and they should wait*. I refer to a completely di+erent feeling.
&y spirit did not fail to catch up. It simply left. It gave up on me, hated me
and got tired of me. It supposed I could live without a spirit as the majority.
And now it returned as if it wanted to give me a second chance.
In late !"#!, my awareness of the situation started to build up with
the compositions I started to work on. I looked into my paintings I created
as a child, my photo archive and engaged in composition %uests* in the
back streets of unfamiliar towns. I acted like the idealist yet lonely
detective who reopened a closed murder case for investigation. &y
strongest weapon was my sincerity. At times, my e+ort for sincerity
contradicted with the sublime pleasure of lying. ,owever, sincerity always
prevailed. I was not surprised as I started to experience - through my
compositions - the feeling of closeness which I found hard to apply to my
own relations and this provided me with great pleasure.
$he main con.ict was to confront the life I lived in the absence of
my newly returned spirit. I lived for years without the awareness my spirit
had left and I dived as deep as I could to confront this reality.
$he fgures and symbols which appear in my paintings ac%uire
personal meaning only upon their completion. /ketched in a deaf and
blind manner, the paintings speak their own languages after they are
fnished. $he fgures which come up in the frame of plastic components
and compositions I intentionally do not forsake sometimes appear with
their masks. 'ther times, they show the courage to catch the eyes of their
creator. 0igures with their deformed faces are the ones I myself lack the
courage to look in the eye.
I meet you with a direct artistic stance which denies any simple
reading. $hus, I believe you could also sense the smell of the agonies
which haunted me throughout the creation process.

MERT YAVACA
anakkale, 2013