Contemporary Istanbul 2023

BIOGRAPHY OF A MATCH

This work is an abstraction of our relationship with time and life.

We are a species that has learned to understand what we call time and use it as a periodic system, organising both our individual and collective lives around these cycles. I believe the underlying reason for this is our mortality. We are obliged to organise our lives within a limited span of time. We try to fulfil our duties, purposes, goals, and dreams within this limited period, while resisting the unexpected events that may obstruct or alter them. The irony is that, despite being so focused on the limits of our time, we expect what we build to last forever.

In this work, the match represents the individual. It could also be seen as a representation of many of us who feel that time passes too quickly. I used my own life cycle as the model for the individual portrayed in the work. Each match is like a photograph of a single year. The act of burning symbolises how time, along with the unexpected events it brings, transforms us in ways beyond our control.

For me, each yearly cycle is an act of starting again from zero. In a sense, it is an attempt to reset the changes that occur beyond my control and to give another chance to the “self” I recognise through my dreams and goals. Of course, at some point, this effort may itself have become my life while I was imagining the life I wanted to live.

But there is no single purpose that we can call “the true way to live.” If there were, all the matches would burn in exactly the same way.