The delicate power of lines and threads in Banu Uğural's works is strikingly evident. Technically, her drawings, created with swift movements, appear ironically in the face of the stillness and speed of everyday life. The power of the line presents a motion on a scale equivalent to the speed of contemporary life. Described as fast sketches, her drawings, realized on various papers, are complemented by hand-embroidered works on fabric, almost as delicate and detailed as a Renaissance painting. These works, embroidered with thread on fabric, carry narratives embedded in the fabric that refer to observations of tranquility in daily life, emerging with a highly poetic texture. As fast as a drawing on paper captures an instantaneous record, hand embroidery on fabric is a collection of slow, tranquil, and lyrical clusters of observations. The fragility of two materials, paper and fabric, each the opposite of the other, transforms into an illusion in the hands of the artist. The rapidly wrinkling and breaking structure of paper, juxtaposed with the softness, slipperiness, or permeability of fabric, creates a strange and absurd trace between the transience of everyday moments. The traces emerge as a meeting, a confrontation between paper and pen. Fabric, on the other hand, presents a more epic visuality, resembling the result of the prolonged, awaited, and eagerly followed threads being squeezed between the fabric—like anchoring moments in life.
Uğural observes life between Istanbul and the Islands. Current and everyday moments become permanent through paper and fabric, which could be considered worthless, temporary, or perhaps insignificant. A scene of a ferry, a dog's sleep, or the cries of a seagull soaring in the sky with a dream of freedom enters Uğural's drawing frame. These cries are nourished on paper with a silent irony. The drawings are poetic, and the subjects are everyday. The drawings on paper are the result of short-lived, momentary stories. The identity of the individuals is unknown, and the characters are vague, just like the moments that are gradually forgotten on dusty shelves in the mind over time. Precious fabrics inherited from nostalgic periods become a new memory stop as specific moments are worked into them for days and months. Memories are delicately woven. A child sitting quietly in the middle of the fabric is perhaps a big void. Upon closer inspection, isn't this void, this silence a bit of the inner silence and void in everyone? An image that could be read as a nihilistic view, created with threads, is a random record of an event, memory, or situation, like the blurry frame of a photograph—months-long pastoral, monochromatic, or black and white recording of a random memory. The artist touches on the current world, life itself, the vague moments of everyday events, and coincidences unnoticed by anyone, turning them into visual explorations.
Banu Uğural is a reader of time with her careful observations. She reads against the rapidly flowing world, revealing the naive and enjoyable aspects of the intricate life. Sometimes, isn't it difficult to live? What about breathing? These are the places we want to be, the moments we want to live in Uğural's works, which come to life like a harmonious rhapsody. Ultimately, Banu Uğural creates a poetic memory from drawing to thread, from transience to permanence, depicting poetic, clear, and enchanting moments. She conveys the enchantment of coincidences in a series of beautiful elegies with impressive tranquility and clarity.
From a calm moment to the joy of suddenly discovering vast encounters under the moving feet of the world... This is life. These newly created landscapes, realities, and perhaps dream-filled enchanted worlds are exactly what we encounter in Banu Uğural's works.
Written by: Melike Bayık
