A Turkish painter at the V.Ismet Güney Art Centre in Nicosia

By Heidi Trautmann

Nursel Sökmen Batyram came to North Cyprus to show her work at the Ismet Güney Art Centre in Nicosia, oil paintings and collages, but neither our artists nor the otherwise always present art lovers came to pay their respect for an artist that had something to say.

With very moving oil paintings Nursel tells us of her childhood, her growing up, the girl hiding behind the curtain and more intimate the moment when she becomes a mother.  There were the  events that determined the life in Turkey during those years, social and political events; there was the revolution in the 1980s, the  burning of the journalists in a hotel by fanatics; there was the loss of her student friends which she mourns, the sadness in her portraits and self-portraits. Her painting technique supports the dramatic stories, unreal, cauchemar-like, like fog tearing up, clouds that partly cover and partly disclose the truth.

Nursel Sökmen Bayram is an artist who makes the viewer face the true and sad history of her country and in one painting of Cyprus.

The exhibition is on until October 10 at office hours.

The complete set of photos are on my website.