Ali Kazma Inkman
Continuing his practice of documenting hard-to-access production spaces, Ali Kazma captures the making of sumi calligraphy ink, a centuries-old craft passed down from master to apprentice at Kobaien studio in Nara, Japan.

The production of this specific calligraphy ink has continued to be practiced more or less in the same way for over five centuries in this studio after its introduction to Japan from China. Kazma’s work offers a fresh perspective on the production of the world’s purest black ink by highlighting the elements of time, labor, and craftsmanship. In Inkman, the artist concentrates on one of the older craftsman in the studio, the remarkable Mr. Toshitsugu Okabe.

The labor-intensive process, captured by Kazma’s camera and re-worked through meticulous editing, evolves into a rhythmic sequence of movements, as Okabe molds the plant and animal-based materials into ink-sticks, using the same tools and gestures that have been repeated through the centuries.

Yazın Öztürk, curator at Istanbul Modern. 

Ali Alışır Hybrid Souls V.4
Born in 1978 in İstanbul, Ali Alışır started his education with a merit scholarship in the Graphic Design Department at the Yeditepe University Faculty of Fine Arts in 1996. He completed his master's degree in photography at the Accademia Italiana in Florence. His works were included in Sotheby's London 2011 auction and his first book, Ali Alışır 2009-2019, was published by Bozlu Art in 2019. In the same year the artist opened the exhibition titled “Hybrid Souls” at Galerié Le Royer in Montréal, Canada.

Ali Alışır's works are included in the permanent collection of the İstanbul Museum of Modern Art, OMM (Odun Pazarı Modern Museum, Eskişehir), institutional collections such as ING Bank, HSBC, Allianz, Akbank, İstanbul Airport Protocol Department, as well as many private local and international collections, including the Presidential Complex in Türkiye and 94 Turkish embassies.

He says the following about the Hybrid Souls series: “In my work, I try to portray the contradictory unity of stillness and movement. I aim to bring models into being not through their physicality but their spiritual depth. I create my works in the same way that nature forms its own creations. While generating the form, I do explore the thought not the anatomy. I intend to achieve unity. I seek to find the grace that’s hidden in the form.”
 

Nadide Akdeniz Untitled
Nadide Akdeniz was graduated from the Painting–Graphics Department of Gazi Education Institute in 1966. In her early works, a critical observation of urban life and its inhabitants predominate, occasionally incorporating ironic elements. In the 1990s, however, she turned toward a new mode of expression in which she interpreted details of nature through a photorealistic technique. These paintings are notable for their meticulous craftsmanship and a colorist approach dominated by shades of blue and green. Having participated in group exhibitions at various museums and galleries in Berlin, Cologne, Paris, Düsseldorf, and London, Nadide Akdeniz continues to live and work in Istanbul.

In Nadide Akdeniz’s fantastic-realistic world, objects that appear as indicators of an ordinary life become symbols indicating society/humanity/time. The fictive, psychological and socio-cultural suggestions of a white cloth, a teapot, a kettle, a hat, a chair, a shoe, a mannequin or an oxygen cylinder take their place in her paintings as loaded metaphors. The cultural baggage of identity, the feminine cycle of life, womanhood, eroticism and sexuality reveal themselves within a feminine symbolism that displays no timidity.

The artist’s paintings reflect, in a grotesque and ironic style, all motifs and images that seem impossible to bring together, presenting the viewer with an emancipating experience of infinite expression between humanity and nature, society and culture and dream and reality. Akdeniz’s treatment of nature is beyond a simply explicable ecological/environmental sensitivity. Plants, trees and leaves, every bush, grass or flower, both the type, color and space they occupy in the structure of a painting and the relationship between every single element in her landscapes are there as a result of a selection, and never randomly or haphazardly placed.

Derya Yücel, independent curator based in Istanbul

Mär Martinez Praying with My Eyes Open I
Mär Martinez is an artist specializing in sculptural painting. Informed by her Cuban and Arab-American heritage - a parallel familial history of displacement - she references disruption by hand-cutting her painted forms with a saw to strip them from their context, rendering them exposed and vulnerable.

Recently, she has been using the iconography of heirloom Turkish carpets brought by her mother’s family to America when fleeing Syria to explore the post-immigration experience. With the support of the 2024 – 2025 Fulbright Fellowship in Painting, she developed a body of work inspired by the tension, generativity, and power exchanges inherent within the hand-weaving process. She views the process of transforming single threads into an enduring carpet as a metaphor for strength, survival, and resilience.

Martinez is currently pursuing her M.F.A. in Painting at Hunter College, NY.  She received her B.F.A. in Painting and B.A. in Art History at the University of Central Florida. She is affiliated with the Sadberk Hanım Museum and Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University in Türkiye. Upcoming 2026 solo exhibitions include: a loom, a fence, a wire, a thread at the Art & History Museums Maitland, FL.
 

Merve Zeybek Universe-II
Born in 1991 in Adapazarı, Türkiye, Merve Zeybek graduated from Marmara University Faculty of Fine Arts, Department of Traditional Turkish Arts, Illumination and Miniature Branch in 2013. She continues her master's program at Marmara University Institute of Fine Arts.

The main material of her works is paper. In her compositions, she reinterprets the page layout and ornamentation of manuscripts to emphasize geometry and explore unique ways of abstraction. In her works showcased in PBM+C Bozlu Art booth, she attempts to scale and map the universe with an introspective approach, and her visual language already bears the traces of maturity. 

 Zeybek's theoretical approaches in constructing her works are varied and include the desire to reach unity by passing through different times and lives of equal value. All these different life paths can take shape in a world of prospects opened by a roll of the dice. Among numerous others, these likelihoods include existence and non-existence, the visible and the invisible... Zeybek's works illuminate the possibilities of life and being by coating them in gold leaves, and the light emanating from the gold envelops all the possibilities of existence tenderly like the lines of a poem.