Helin Sahin
Memory, personality, and emotional intelligence made sculptural in iridescent digital textures
Each of Sahin's artworks blends complex compositions in photography and digital sculpture, each with an aim to encapsulate moments from the artist's memory. These are recreations of the artist's innermost spaces, the subconscious rifts and bumps that form around a memory, viewed using a lens that looks through time. The backgrounds to these scenes are not virtual spaces, but rather full-colour photography, taken from a candid close-up vantage that adds an element of intimacy to the digital sculptural subjects. These speak softly, with voices of smooth, silken, glowy glass, textures that suddenly cut with snagging edges, then their form continues with a mirror gloss again. Elemental motifs are present in many of Helin Sahin's artworks, either represented physically (water, the sea) or implied via association with the potent symbols that underpin many formal aspects of the works that stem from the artist's Kurdish heritage.
Imagination augments reality, mythology informs duality in Sahin's deeply psychological creatures
At first, it may take some time for one's eye to fall upon a recognisable moment in between the distractions of glinting light and looming shadow, though when one does find an entry point into the artist's fascinating manifestations, they resonate with an energy that goes beyond aesthetics. We find meaning behind dissonant patterns, that transform the scattered twigs and informally placed shells into shimmering, breathing, whispering creatures. Helin Sahin might be said to be describing her semiotics of memory through her artistic practice, treading and reshaping the well-worn waterways of history and mythology. By blending the art of photography with three-dimensional digital creations, we are presented with a collage that comes close to sculpture, certainly designed in the round, though occupying the same kind of impossible liminal space as a dream, that suspends disbelief in the manner of storytelling. Each of these printed images is a portal we are invited to step past, and yet presents a barrier - the rendered guardians - the subjects of Sahin's artworks - which seem to simultaneously allure and appal.
Text by Jonathan Ferguson
I try to explore the representational possibilities of identity, belonging and memory. I rely on the deconstruction of conventional perceptions both conceptually and visually. I seek to develop different approaches to digitizing these notions.
Biography Helin Sahin
born 1992 in Ankara, Turkey
lives and works in Cologne, Germany
Education
2010-2015 BA Journalism, Gazi University, Ankara, Turkey
2012-2013 Media and Communication, European Humanities University, Vilnius, Lithuania (Erasmus Exchange Program)
Exhibitions (selection)
2021
bê welat - the unexpected storytellers, nGbK, Berlin, Germany
2020
Real Hours, Baitball, Palazzo San Guiseppe, Polignano a Mare, Italy
2019
Snow Room – Helin Sahin: Xanî, After Howl Studio, Brussels, Belgium
2018
Stimulation Overload 3, Superchief Gallery, Miami, USA
Pantone PDC, Industry Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
2017
Black Metal Artist, Galerija Siva, Zagreb, Croatia
Mentor, Galeri Cankaya, Ankara, Turkey
Feltbae, B4BEL4B Gallery, California, USA
2016
Bitcoins Love, UNA Galleria, Piacenza, Italy
Data Parade, Colorado, USA
Stimulation Overload, Superchief Gallery Soho, New York, USA
Darkshiner, Under Club Showcase, Paris, France
2015
The Wrong Digital Biennial: Uncurated Pavillion, Museo Universitario Del Chopo, Mexico City, Mexico
Layer, Galerie Neuf, Paris, France
Werke von Helin Sahin
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Border Crossing
2021 / Digital Sculpting / 104 x 104 cm / 40.9 x 40.9 in (framed)
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Metamorph
2020 / Digital Sculpting / 128.5 x 104 cm / 50.6 x 40.9 in (framed)
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sold
Dual Nature
2020 / Digital Sculpting / 104 x 104 cm / 40.9 x 40.9 in (framed)
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sold
Urchin
2020 / Digital Sculpting / 104 x 104 cm / 40.9 x 40.9 in (framed)
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JJA
2019 / Digital Sculpting / 104 x 104 cm / 40.9 x 40.9 in (framed)
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PS
2019 / Digital Sculpting / 139 x 104 cm / 54.7 x 40.9 in (framed)
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In My Bed
2017 / Digital Sculpting / 104 x 104 cm / 40.9 x 40.9 in (framed)