Belmin Pilevneli

‘From Nazim to Piraye’ is a visual exploration of intimacy in the poems of the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet, from a contemporary perspective. He was imprisoned because of his humanitarian ideas, where he wrote love poems to his beloved, Piraye. His poems were some kind of an escape for him to meet his lover. Through the work, it is aimed to visualise intimacy by reflecting the poet’s pure and intense emotions locked inside the poems for his beloved. The illustrations are produced with traditional and contemporary techniques. With the use of blind embossing, the tactile nature of the paper gives an added dimension to the work, making it simultaneously instant and distant. With the project, it is aimed to demonstrate people how valuable it is to feel and to share intimate feelings and express them. The fact that it is being forgotten to feel and express these human feelings, within contemporary lifestyle is critiqued. In contemporary times there is a lack of intimacy, which is the essential to life, the basis of how life continues. This is why it is desired to make the audience feel emphatic, looking at the illustrations of a love story from 1945, that could not be expressed freely in real life.