A single image of the sky, pursued for years… A cloud emerging between pixels makes visible the threshold between dream and reality. In a practice that begins in personal memory yet opens into a collective emotional space, meaning expands as the image recedes. We meet Merve Şendil precisely at this threshold, beginning a conversation about the transitional spaces she builds between the echoes of myth, traces of childhood, and the fragile surface of the digital age—speaking through ideas of slowness, patience, and a shared sense of ‘now’.
The transitional spaces you create between dreams, myths, and reality form the foundation of your practice. How do these three realms intertwine for you?
For me, dreams, myths, and reality are not separate realms; they are layered states that merge within my work. In my recent pieces—especially those centered on the image of the cloud—I intentionally blur the boundaries between them. A cloud is both a tangible natural phenomenon and a mythic, poetic vessel; it belongs to the sky yet casts a shadow on the earth. It cannot be held, yet it physically exists. This duality makes visible the threshold between dream and reality.
Dreams offer an intuitive and personal point of departure. Myths do not appear as direct narratives but rather as echoes. Instead of representing a specific story, they function like a timeless vibration. In this way, the work can simultaneously touch a personal field of association and a collective memory.
In my practice, these three elements exist not as fixed categories but as a state of transition—positioning the viewer precisely within that threshold.
Poetry and short texts are integral to your visual language. At what stage does writing enter your process?
In my work, writing and poetry are not merely accompanying elements; they can become the image itself. Exhibition and artwork titles function in the same way—carefully constructed texts that guide and shape the content.
For me, writing serves as both a conceptual backbone and a carrier of emotional intensity. It does not stand in opposition to the visual; it builds the space alongside it, shapes the atmosphere, and transforms the viewer’s mode of reading.
You begin from your own personal history but open toward more collective emotions. How do you navigate this balance between the personal and the shared?
My point of departure is often my personal memory—traces from childhood, everyday life, fragile moments. When I distill my own experience into a symbolic density, the narrative shifts from being purely individual to becoming a shared emotional space. A cloud, a sentence, an unfinished phrase—these may emerge from my story, but they do not remain confined to it.
I establish this balance by resisting over-explanation. I do not conceal the personal, but I also do not fix it in place; I leave space for the viewer to insert their own memory.
Your works seem to hold both a digital sensibility and a long, labor-intensive, handmade process. What does this relationship between the two extremes mean to you?
For me, the relationship between the digital and the handmade is about tempo. The digital world produces instantaneous, consumable images, while I might spend years pursuing a single image before capturing it. I wait patiently until that image appears exactly as I envisioned it.
The ‘moment’ visible in my work is, in fact, the result of a long process of waiting and repetition. The digital aesthetic may present a surface that feels contemporary, but behind that surface lies patience, persistence, and insistence. What matters to me is precisely this: generating a slow intensity within an age of speed.
The fragmented, pixelated structure in your works leaves space for the viewer. Why is it important for the viewer to fill these gaps with their own intuition?
The fragmented, pixelated structure in my work is not intended to diminish the image but to create room for the viewer. A fully resolved and complete image can render the gaze passive; gaps, on the other hand, invite the viewer into the work. Interruptions in the image cause the gaze to pause and allow thought to enter.
For this reason, these gaps are not absences but spaces of encounter. As one moves closer to the pixelated structure and the varying thickness of paint across each distinct square, the certainty of the image begins to dissolve. The importance of the viewer's position ensures that the work transcends being merely something seen, transforming into an experience completed together with the viewer; it makes the presence of the viewer visible and active.
In your Ferahfeza exhibition, the work Under the Same Sky points to the idea of a shared space. What was the primary encounter you hoped to create with the viewer in this piece?
With ‘Under the Same Sky’, I wanted to invite the viewer to a threshold that is both personal and shared. I conceived of the sky not as a landscape but as a space that belongs to no one and yet contains everyone.
Through the design of the frame, I hoped the viewer might sense that while they are alone with their own solitude, they are simultaneously connected to others through an invisible bond. The work gestures toward a moment of awareness in which looking outward becomes turning inward—where the individual quietly merges with the collective.
In the same work, you bring together images of the sky photographed on the same day from different locations. How does this gesture reshape our perception of time and space?
This piece was created by combining two photographs of the sky taken on the same day, from different locations, with two lenses turned toward one another. This encounter invites us to reconsider time not as a linear flow but as a simultaneous expanse.
When lives and moments unfolding in different places meet on a single surface, the unity of space dissolves; yet this fragmentation does not produce rupture. On the contrary, it establishes a new connection through the shared experience of time. The viewer is invited to consider that the sky they are looking at is being seen, at that very same moment, by someone elsewhere. This thought softens the sense of distance while strengthening the feeling of a shared ‘now.’