Solitude in rupture 2 by Dilge Dilsiz

24x36 Inkjet Print by Dilge Dilsiz

Artist Statement:

My work emerges from a life lived between cultures. As a woman from Turkey who has navigated multiple social and cultural contexts, I remain attentive to the hierarchies that shape everyday experiences. A dual background in psychology and art has deepened my interest in observing behavior and analyzing interpersonal relationships, particularly how power operates within them. My artistic practice becomes a space to question inherited distinctions between people and to open room for multiple, coexisting understandings of identity. 

Collaboration sits at the center of my process. The work depends on the bonds I build with others; stories shared in vulnerability become sites where inner burdens intersect with broader social structures. Through this engagement, I explore how individuals endure and negotiate systems of power, translating lived experience into visual form.

My recent projects adopt a hauntological framework to examine the liminal condition of diasporic life. Figures appear ghostlike, half-formed, caught between memory and presence, past and becoming. These images function as a metaphorical human geography, mapping the emotional terrain of displacement where one must constantly negotiate between preservation and adaptation.

Using strategies of transparency and material layering, I create visual environments that feel permeable and open. These spaces gesture toward refuge while acknowledging the instability produced by troubled power structures. The work ultimately addresses how communities shaped by displacement and alienation cultivate resilience. By tracing the tensions between erasure and persistence, I aim to render visible the fragile yet enduring connections that bind personal histories to collective experience.