IN THE MAIN AND CENTER GALLERIES
Elif Soyer|Making Meaning
November 29 - December 30, 2023
Opening Reception: December 1st, 5-8pm
Elif Soyer, What Remains, mixed media, 36 x 50 x 12 inches
Artist Statement:
My favorite quote from of my favorite characters on one of my all time favorite shows is "Everyday takes figuring out all over again how to f***ing live.” (-Calamity Jane/Deadwood)
I think this is true for most. Some are closer to the feeling, some are able to keep it at bay, and some who live with it are comfortable with it, others are not. I find myself thinking about this more often than not, but specially in the studio where I feel like making art, at least for me, is about making meaning out of the mundane, out of work, and out of time.
This body of work is a conglomeration of old and new ideas and experiments culminating in time and material layered fabrications. I use fabric, thread, clay (fired and unfired), latex, pen and pencil on older work as platforms. Many of the three dimensional objects that I have embedded in the work have become like totems to me over the years, having started creating them long ago when my father survived a heart attack. I did not allow myself to use them until he passed, feeling that if I did, he would somehow be devoid of protection. He doesn’t need them any more, and I found myself wanting to make them live and be in this world in a different way, connected to one another and interacting in an environment, an environment that coalesced through their interactions, where somehow that environment also then morphs into an object.
Bio:
Elif Soyer is a Turkish-American artist. She received a BA in Economics from Emory University in 1985, a studio diploma in 1995 and a MFA in 1997 from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She is also a fencing coach and co-owner of Moe Fencing Club in Somerville, MA where she trains Olympic hopefuls, weekend warriors and some of the top-ranked fencers in the US. Her work has oscillated between drawing on the interior landscape of the human body and the exterior landscape of her immediate environment, but has always had a very strong tie to time through layering or other seemingly obsessive processes. While she loves the process of painting and drawing, she has a very strong attraction to so-called "untraditional" mediums such as gravel, discarded textile, raw clay and scraps of day to day life.
