Born / Bearing in to Death

Born in 1962, Gül Ilgaz graduated from the Mimar Sinan University Department of Painting in 1988. She attended various programs in art and design at Bard College and Savannah College in the U.S.A., and took part in the guest artist program in informal architecture at Banff Center, Canada, in 2004. Represented Turkey in the 50th Venice Biennial (2003), the artist produces photographs, videos, and installations. In her work she examines the contradictions between East and West, or the traditional and modern. At the same time, she puts the dilemmas of her own life under the microscope. She explores various aspects of a woman’s identity from a personal standpoint. In a pure, poetic fashion she highlights spiritual states which are shared by everyone. Shaped through her own experiences and body, the works arouse the innermost, indefinable emotions of the spectator, bringing to the surface the sadness and melancholy which he/she suppresses in everyday life.

In her work 'Born/ Bearing in to Death', Gül Ilgaz treats birth as the beginning of death. The photograph shows not so much the physical side of birth as the separation of mother and child after delivery, the loss of their oneness. The child is across the room from the mother in the photograph, but it has no existence of its own; the mother shows both the separation that comes with birth and the beginning of death.