Interview: Muya Arts/ 2021
“Water has beautiful mythologies in different cultures. It is erotic, powerful, fragile and so much more. It’s my muse. I let it direct the road to my shapes.”
There are many layers in Deniz Kazma's work. If you were to classify your life stage, material, and color, how would you make it?
I think I carry the graphic designer identity on my paintings and sculptures and vice versa on my commissioned design works. I try to allow space for growth in my work, so that it has its confidence, maturing in the process. My current works are especially processed-oriented. I’m not interested in expressing. I enjoy forcing the limits of the material. Technically, when the tool, the material, and/or the surface work smoothly, I tend to disrupt or push it to its physical limits to see what else can happen. A large number of my works are abstractions of natural elements.
Does Deniz Kazma have any thoughts about your work displayed? What kind of scene is the work applied to? Will you start planning it during the usual creative process?
I am interested in displays. Sometimes some of my works change their identity along the way, as I search for display, like my work on body extensions or masks. They were initially part of my collage painting. At some point, I decided that they should be displayed to humans. I love the human body and its capacities. I am still working on this project to find a nice balance between costume design and painting. I want them to stay as painting pieces.
In Deniz Kazma's work, the layered graphics are all without edges and corners and curved like liquid. Does it have any special meaning?
When I was a kid, I wanted to become an ocean biologist. Water, being my muse, always dominated my dreams and tainted most of my childhood memories. I am always curious about the memory of water, its energy and ability, and its symbolism in ancient and contemporary cultures. Water has beautiful mythologies in different cultures. It is erotic, powerful, fragile and so much more. It’s my muse. I let it direct the road to my shapes.
As a graphic designer, how does Deniz Kazma support her art career? Work or sell your own work? If work, what kind of job are you doing? If selling work, how?
I also work as a graphic designer and illustrator for various clients, I enjoy problem-solving and having this challenge in my professional life. For the rest of my time, I am studying art history and creative writing. I simultaneously create and experiment in my home studio. Sometimes, I sell some of my artworks through galleries and online art platforms.
In the current era of social media applications, how does Deniz Kazma use these social media to promote your work? Or is there a good way to promote your work?
It’s important to have an online presence, and it seems like you can do anything with it. But I also find it dangerous to give up on our reality, this kills our soul, sincerity, productivity, and sense of the present. I have to spend quite a lot of time on these platforms for my clients, but I do not think I am using them efficiently for my own promotion or communication.
In Deniz Kazma's work, there is a sense of integration and rhythm, and we see that some of the works are presented in connection with the human body, such as the arms, the head, etc. What is the meaning of this combination of rhythm and the human body?
Most of the time when I have an idea, I let it take its natural physical form with my current occupation. But in this case, the interest came into the body as an idea. At the time, I was reading a lot about transhumanism and body upgrading. I wanted to see what it would be like if the extensions or the replacements were indeed artworks. Spontaneously, I was looking for a display solution for my cut-out collage works. The human body has the perfect speed and flexibility as a moving display, which we can observe in some tribal or ancient costumes or performing arts.
When Deniz Kazma's work is worn on the head or combined with the face of the character, it is very beautiful. Have you ever thought of extending the work as a design for jewelry or accessories?
I have created some accessories and I worked on onstage costumes. In the future, I really want to work on dance costumes. As for jewelry design, I think it could be interesting as a collaboration.
Did you see Deniz Kazma's work attempt to use materials (such as wood) for presentation? Was the cutting made by laser cutting? When trying different materials, how do you feel different from the texture drawn or the effect displayed? How to add different colors to the work?
Working with wood is a slower process than working on paper. Water on paper is improvisation, woodcuts are rehearsed. I use a laser cutting system to cut out the pieces of my wood sculptures. I carve the textures, and lines on the surface by hand. I love wood and its derived product, paper, and I love to feel the resistance or openness in these materials while working on the visual lexicon.
The wood sculptures are just another step, like the acrylic or ink textures on paper, the cut-out pieces of these textures as collage works, the wearable paintings, or the photography of these compositions. I want my artwork to have different lifetimes – or bodies – so fundamentally, the same soul in a different body.
Muya Arts ©2021
Here is the ink to the original interview