Drawing from family photos, Damla Yalçın has meticulously embroidered the domestic spaces and residential neighborhood of her childhood in Ankara. Inside the Le Meridien Hotel in Etiler, where Krank Gallery recently moved, Yalçın installed ruby red wallpaper with vegetal motifs to backdrop 21 works

To thread a needle through fabric, hooped by a band of wood, is an act charged with metaphors of relationship, both organic and personal, drawing its makers and admirers into the inner worlds of memory and imagination. It is a practice recalling traditional methods honed throughout history to appreciate the value of salable fabrics and textiles by interweaving familiar visual embellishments, enticing would-be buyers with irresistible seductions. Its rich floral harmonies have bedecked the ensembles of both the moneyed and working classes throughout the medieval to the pre-modern eras from London to Tokyo.

In the centuries of Ottoman rule, embroidery was a distinguished craft, and remains an iconic symbol shared by the many ethnicities of its multinational culture. While mostly resurrected for foreign affections, and preserved by an increasingly powerful social milieu who line the streets of Istanbul’s old city donned in flamboyant clothing styles once popular in the bygone days of less audiovisual stimulation, embroidery has also assumed new adaptations of form and technique. Its skills have been taken up by the youngest generation of Turkish women, who are using its subtle craft to make social statements, and fine art.

By Daily Sabah News