Turkish born artist Merve Özaslan is our first featured collage artist ever. In this form of art, which has gone unnoticed by me for far too long, a piece is assembled of different parts, creating a new whole. Özaslan uses vintage black and white photographs that she combines with fragments of nature, creating a new visual story.
A collage may include magazine and newspaper clippings, ribbons, paint, bits of colored or handmade papers, portions of other artwork or texts, photographs and found objects, glued to a piece of paper or canvas. The origins of collage can be traced back hundreds of years, but the technique made a dramatic reappearance at the beginning of the 20th century when it became a distinctive part of modern art, notoriously made popular by the likes of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso.
Özaslan’s work is simple yet mesmerising, how the perspectives of the two overlaid photos collide in perfect harmony. The contrast between the monochrome and color creates a drama that is only enhanced by the memories of days gone by. A series titled Natural Act is composed of several collages based on the questions of the relation between nature and humanity. ” It’s basically a critical presentation referring to the fact that each of us is part of the nature. It seeks the answer whether greed, urbanisation, mechanisation and detaching from the nature is favourable or coherent for human or not. In that sense natural act appears with its all colors when our emotions are paralysed in the vital points of the cliche and dull city life ” – Özaslan writes. I for one am absolutely addicted to Özaslan’s work and religiously follow her posts on Instagram, which is where I actually discovered her! If you are interested in buying one of her collages, click here.
Images © Merve Özaslan