Cansu Çakar
Artist
Cansu Çakar lives and works in İzmir. In her compositions, The artist often uses the classic motifs and places them in absurd contexts to question today in a historical-critical way. References to the Ottoman Empire enjoy great popularity in Turkish art and pop culture, because it subliminally targets the continuous pomp of Turkish rulers through history. The works are highly satirical.

At Mahalla Share House the Mahalla Festival presents her watercolor on paper the Holy Tulip.


Cansu Çakar’s elaborate calligraphic work shows the hind part of a female torso adorned with a tulip. In Ottoman calligraphic representations, floral ornaments were used primarily as symbols for ethical and theological discourses. The Tulip symbolizes the unity and presence of God in calligraphy. In Poetry the flower is used in addition to the roses also as a metaphor for human sexuality. The Divan poets liked to refer to the genitals as budding roses and opening tulips. Cansu Çakar is interested in the breaks that are created in folk culture by distinctive and often funny phrases. In Slang, the “ass-tulip” is the anus of slaughtered animals decorated with parsley or mint in the shop windows of butchers. In colloquial language, city dwellers are often referred to as ass tulips by the man on the street because of their snobbish manners.