Turkish artist Deniz Sağdıç makes artworks from textile waste

The Turkish visual artist Deniz Sağdıç creates impressive portraits from textile waste, among other things. From a distance they look like paintings done in bold strokes and colors. Upon closer inspection, viewers are amazed to discover that each portrait consists of thousands of small objects, waste products such as discarded zippers, buttons, old museum tickets, computer parts or plastic bags.

Detail view of Deniz Sağdıç’s portrait made from old zippers. Image: FashionUnited

Art like this needs a large exhibition space that gives viewers the opportunity to quietly engage with each work, to get close to it and then to view it from a distance. What better place than an airport to meet these needs and make Sağdıç’s art accessible to as many people as possible? They stumble across their works – often literally – on the way to their boarding gate, much like the materials used – an inevitable part of life that transitions into an upcycled existence.

Sağdıç is known for using scrap materials for her artworks and the airport exhibition “0” Zero Point is part of her current project Ready-ReMade. There are 31 works of art in total, showing both unknown and familiar faces, such as naturalist David Attenborough or actor John Malkovich.

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John Malkovich portrait of Deniz Sağdıç in Istanbul Airport. Image: FashionUnited

Sağdıç obtained the materials from the airport’s waste collection point, drawing attention to the fact how much waste an airport, especially a huge one like Istanbul, produces on a daily basis. With 130,000 employees handling more than 37 million passengers in 2021, it is the busiest airport in Europe and the 13th busiest in the world.

The aim is to “create new intellectual realms to question the new meanings of such objects by bringing together some objects that have become waste because they have lost their function,” says Sağdıç in her artist profile.

Jon Malkovich by Deniz Sagdic
Detail of the John Malkovich portrait by Deniz Sagdic. Image: FashionUnited

The approach to choosing each scrap material is not easy, as the artist reveals: she observes and experiments with each material for days before knowing exactly how to use it. “Through this process I try to get to know the material; it starts whispering in my ear what to do with it. Then our collaboration with the material begins, I bring it to life, but this time in the form of an artwork,” Sağdıç explains in an interview with Stir magazine. In this way, she also challenges the notion of what counts as art.

Her use of textile waste such as zippers, buttons and discarded fabrics is particularly apt given Turkey’s role and dependence on the garment and textile industry. Sağdıç wants to bring her art to the people instead of just letting a few see it in a gallery or museum, and in 2019 she also exhibited at the New York fair Premiere Vision, among others.

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Earlier work by Deniz Sağdıç. Image: YKK

She has also experimented with denim, a material she describes as a “communication platform” and credits it with being known around the world: “If you’re not a textile professional, you might not know the types of fabrics, but you will know all those See denim, recognize it because you’ve touched it at least once in your life. Denim doesn’t just belong to one culture or country,” she said, speaking to Japanese manufacturer YKK, who supported and exhibited her work.

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Portrait made from old zippers by Deniz Sagdic. Image: FashionUnited

“I started the Ready-ReMade project as a reaction or response to this approach and revised it, using ‘waste materials’ with classic art methods such as painting objects with oil paint, exhibiting them as sculptures or rearranging them in a specific order ‘ adds Sağdıç.

Sağdıç graduated from the Faculty of Painting at the University of Mersin, a port city on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast and her hometown, in 2003. She then moved to Istanbul and soon became known for her unique style with forms that seemed almost fluid. She received a full scholarship to Doğuş University in Istanbul and graduated with a Masters in Fine Arts in 2015.

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Detail of a portrait of Deniz Sağdıç made from old plastic bags. Image: FashionUnited

Deniz Sağdıç’s exhibition “0” Zero Point at Istanbul Airport is open to visitors until mid-March 2023.

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