I open my eyes to this question. It is 4 a.m. How much can we truly know the things we consider our own? How much do the things we think belong to us actually belong to us? Your partner, your friend, your child, the plant growing in its pot over time, or the idea in your mind. How much of them is ours? The two lines you write, the two figures you draw. Do they look the way you see them through another pair of eyes? I don’t know.

Something like daydreams often passes through my mind. During the hours when I am trying to keep up with life, my hands seem to draw the dreams I see. Then I give birth to every body that does not belong to this world into this world, stand before them, and ask: who are you?”

Seldem Kargı’s practice occupies a threshold where the sense of belonging becomes fragile. Everything presumed to belong to her—relationships, images, ideas, and even the body—shifts, multiplies, and becomes estranged as it passes through the filter of other gazes. Her practice takes shape within this field of uncertainty, moving along the fine line between ownership and distance, subject and reflection. Kargı’s paintings do not seek certainty; rather, they open up a space of contemplation where images whose ownership has become ambiguous begin to circulate.

The “daydreams” that pass through the artist’s mind during the hours when she struggles to keep pace with everyday life form the primary source of her practice. These images, unplanned and emerging in the moment, appear on the canvas as bodies that seem not to belong to this world. In constructing these figures, Kargı does not merely represent them; she “gives birth” to them into this world, then stands before them and questions their identities. In this way, each body becomes an entity that both emerges from the artist’s inner world and gradually separates itself from her.

The figures in this exhibition invite the viewer into a visual experience suspended between the familiar and the unfamiliar. The question of who the drawn figures and written lines truly belong to is directed not only at the artist but also at the viewer. Because in Kargı’s world, images do not belong to a single gaze; with every new pair of eyes, they are reconstructed.

Seldem Kargı’s practice is situated precisely where the sense of ownership begins to dissolve. Everything presumed to belong to her—bodies, thoughts, relationships—shifts toward other meanings. This exhibition makes visible the artist’s quiet encounters with the figures she creates. The bodies called into this world invite the viewer into the midst of this uncertain encounter.

“Who are you?”