BERNA DOLMACI
She was born in 1994 in Akşehir. The artist completed her undergraduate education in the Painting Department at DEU Faculty of Fine Arts and is currently continuing her master’s degree in the Main Art Department of DEU Graduate School of Fine Arts. Living and producing in İzmir, Dolmacı’s practice is fundamentally rooted in the sketchbook. Her approach to the sketchbook lies within the practice of a visual diary, recording the image belonging to the moment she encounters both textually and visually. At the same time, she aims to objectively document something belonging to that moment, whether it be a leaf, candy wrapper, receipt, flower, hair strand, paper, etc.
Over time, this visual diary initially meant to document moments transformed into untouched abstractions of nature through pure collage techniques. Since 2017, she has expanded beyond the notebook and began producing large-scale collages with waste papers dyed with organic, non-industrial materials. Since 2018, the connection of these collages with space has strengthened, manifesting as large-scale installations and site coverings in public spaces with a process-oriented approach. Since 2019, she has produced her works within an ecological art perspective and, since 2020, has used a chosen piece of land as her studio, staying there periodically to create her works.
Dolmacı uses as her primary materials the soil and plants found on the land, as well as the peels and seeds of vegetables and fruits she herself consumes cut, dried, and incorporated into the work. As the works take their final form, the characteristics of the space are taken into consideration, allowing the work to reach its ultimate state. Thus begins a new, vital phase for the piece.
The meanings in Berna Dolmacı’s paintings, collages, and site-specific installations made with natural materials cannot be adequately evaluated solely through familiar perspectives such as the relationship between humans and nature, the connection between artworks and nature, the artist’s confrontation with landscape, or the viewer’s contemporary perception of nature. These works examine, decisively and assertively, an unavoidable truth: environmental pollution that threatens the global future, and its negative impacts on humanity. Dolmacı’s determination becomes particularly evident in her process of producing the works by living directly in nature and using organic materials familiar from daily life. By living and working in nature, she presents these works created with organic materials she herself produces as an act of healing for the future of the global environment.
The three phases in the production of these works traditional line drawings in the sketchbook, landscapes painted with organic pigments on canvas, minimalist nature collages created from waste papers colored with natural dyes, and site installations created with papers and fabrics produced through the same methods effectively reflect the artist’s intention and ideology. Dolmacı warns the viewer through a body of work that focuses on how nature long a fundamental theme in art and a central image especially within painting appears or is represented in today’s critical aesthetic process. This production investigates the relationship and conflict between contemporary nature and political, economic, and social ideologies.
She opposes the deceptive romanticism of conventional and traditional beautiful landscape imagery and the kitsch aesthetics serving the consumer economy, proposing instead a realist perspective. This view argues that, within today’s global environmental conditions, the nature-art relationship intervenes against the negative impacts of global ecological politics. Typically, nature that is ‘created nature’ (natura naturata) is perceived to represent old worldviews (metaphysics), while ‘nature as creator’ (natura naturans) seems to represent the new worldview (dialectics). In the second half of the 20th century, three dimensional landscapes that intervened directly in nature, supporting the idea of ‘natura naturans’, ended the dominance of traditional landscape painting. Walter De Maria’s ‘Lightning Field’ and James Turrell’s ‘Roden Crater’ project in Arizona are among the most important examples. Dolmacı’s works are contemporary examples of this understanding.
Her series titled ‘Vikaye’ (protection, preservation, “cry”) consists of mountain landscapes attached to the back of a worn, framed canvas, challenging conventional modes of display. When looking at these landscapes presented unconventionally the viewer is reminded of familiar thoughts: that “landscape” is not what is seen in nature itself but rather the moment a person finds beautiful by observing nature; that the word immediately evokes landscape painting; that landscape painting in Turkey developed largely due to religious conditions; that landscape has always been one of the most loved and sought-after subjects in painting worldwide. Dolmacı demonstrates that the landscape considered an exhausted and consumed genre in both classic and modern forms can only turn toward truth when produced through such unconventional means.
Her installation titled ‘Vaveyla’, produced on cloth using dried plants, twigs, olives, gravel, ash, sawdust, dried leaves, and organic pigment collected from the land, and coded with the scent of fire, spans 13 x 6 meters and is presented as a metaphor for large forest fires. ‘Sığınak’ (Shelter) an installation resembling an entrance through a door into a mysterious cave and ‘Otonom’, created from scrap paper, seeds, and acrylic, invite the viewer to experience the relationship between nature and oneself through seeking refuge in nature.
Her large panel installations titled ‘Hazzi’, ‘Sisli Mavi’, ‘Mai’, ‘Revan’, and ‘Kayran’ all created entirely with organic materials and produced through working in nature transform landscape painting into relational aesthetics while simultaneously referencing the geographical meaning of the term “plate”: the massive segments of Earth’s crust ranging from hundreds of square kilometers to millions.
As digital media and perceptually stimulating visual imagery are presented to society, many contemporary artists have turned to natural materials, producing with concern for the future of the global environment and connecting their work with the data of nature. The organic sustainability of Dolmacı’s works, situated between form and function, reinforces a lasting tendency toward naturalism in art and design. The characteristics of analog landscape paintings and installations are compelling: they aim primarily to reflect or awaken the consciousness of humanity, which can never escape questioning who they are and what surrounds them. Despite technology altering seeing and looking both physically and spiritually, maintaining the human capacity to perceive, interpret, and understand what is seen remains essential.
Today, digital devices create imitation and virtual nature, shaping the realities of artistic change and transformation. Landscape as a genre has found its place within this virtual realm; seeing and looking have yielded to technological assimilation. The environments created using nature’s materials and reflecting its beauty form a resistance to this duality. Kant’s thought that “Just as nature is beautiful when it appears as art, so is art beautiful when it appears as nature,” or the belief dating from the 18th century that nature carries a moral value guiding human civilization and expressing a sublime order, is challenged by the question of how valid these ideas remain today. Through her work, Dolmacı offers one possible response. Today, the beauty of nature can only emerge in an ecological context. Nature is the most significant ideology of culture and the consumption industry, and everything related to nature is political.
