Sine Icli and Çağlar Tahiroğlu

Çağlar Tahiroğlu (located in Lyon, France) and Sine Icli (located in London, UK) are Turkish artists that, through a series of meetings at art residencies, struck up a friendship that has bloomed into collaboration. During the global quarantine, the two artists took part in the very first Virtual Residency.

The artists on a nature walk in Iceland, February 2020

Lockdown 2020 (series, polaroid), Çağlar Tahiroğlu

How did you meet, and how did you realise you would work well together?

Sine Icli (SI): We actually met in Amsterdam two years ago when we were both at a residency called the European Academy of Participatory Arts. The residency happened in the house of a dead painter, Gisèle d’Ailly. She used it as a safe house in WWII. It was a house with amazing condensed energy.

Çağlar Tahiroğlu (ÇT): Yes, and there were several possible groups we could have been in, so there was every chance we wouldn’t have met. But we did.

SI: Our group was insane, so much fun! And after that, Çağlar was all over the world and I was going between London and Istanbul, and Çağlar was due at a residency in Iceland in February, but she missed the first week and stayed with me in London instead.

ÇT: Yes, there were huge storms and my flight was cancelled so I spent the week with Sine. We talked a lot, it coincided closely with the passing away of my mother.

Home, acrylic on canvas, 2019, Sine Icli

SI: And then Çağlar said I should come to Iceland. We hadn’t found a focus yet, so I joined her and we went to Iceland together. We started talking about our collaboration on nature walks in Iceland in February (2020).

ÇT: I think we really connected in that safehouse, it made us feel at home. The owner, Gisèle, was hiding children from the Nazis. She even had an empty piano to hide people in.

SI: Some of them spent five years inside that house, and those things attach to the walls. It’s in the air. You can feel it when you’re inside.

ÇT: It was fun to do that program. There were lots of nationalities and it was nice that they invited Turkish artists as Europeans. We appreciated that, being seen as part of Europe.

Which skill gaps do you fill for one another?

SI: Çağlar works in a way that is very clean. She has a linear structure. She might not know where the end is, but she works along a line that is clear in her head. I’m more volatile. It’s nice to be different.

ÇT: I follow ideas and Sine follows material. So we’re not similar, but we’re complementary.

SI: And we also have tiny pieces of each other in each of us. Even in the medium sense. We both do photography, moving image – the balance is different but we both have these things in our practice.

Morning meeting during the Virtual Residency 29-03 Cohort (Main: Çağlar Tahiroğlu L to R: Helen Mandel, Josine Vissers, Katie Taylor, Nihan Karahan, Parikshit Pisal, Sine Icli)

Do you work together from a single idea? I'm interested in how deep the collaboration goes?

ÇT: We work from multiple ideas and we’re learning to put them together by working online. We’re still in the research phase. At one point we’ll say how we’ll bring these ideas together.

SI: This week I dived into poetry about nature, and about humans in nature. And in this situation (quarantine), I’m thinking about what there is instead of nature, what function does nature have and what kinds of representations are there of nature when you can’t go outside.

ÇT: Then there’s nature as a lifecycle. It’s interesting to think of it in a circular way. In our conception of time we have no continuum, it’s linear. So that circle of nature that repeats and repeats…

SI: It’s something to understand the world; a tool. We're Thinking about giving meaning to life through nature, and about what nature means to humans. We’re both thinking about that, but we’re looking at it from different directions.

ÇT: Yes, we were thinking about making individual memories collected from a particular place, and then comparing those memories and places. We were dreaming of long walks, actually, but now we’re stuck inside we’ve had to start it in front of a computer. But it has started!

SI: We were waiting to go somewhere, yes. But now we have started we are more connected than ever.

What has connected you, do you think?

SI: The quantity and quality of our online time together :)

ÇT: and the fact we are experiencing the same things, we’re living the same things.

SI: Yes. I used to feel like I had separate groups of friends. I had my London friends and my Istanbul friends, but now it’s like we are all just in this same weird space. And I think that’s helped us, actually. I imagine Çağlar in that same space.

What attracted you to the Virtual Residency?

ÇT: I found it on the art residency hashtag. I wasn’t active on social media before, but corona has left me with more time. I thought it might help me overcome some creative blocks – like time. Time was getting to be like one of Dali’s clocks, just spreading, so I needed structure.

SI: Çağlar is good at adapting, but I struggle. In mid-March we prepared a proposal and I was still fixated on going to a real space. But she has this great side, of being able to adapt and change her mindset.

ÇT: And what I had felt in London was that in the art world it was every man for himself. But this virtual connectivity has been very healing.

Do you think you will meet again in person before your project is finished?

ÇT: I will go to London, I think. We’re thinking that in 2021 we’ll look for a residency where we can put all the research together in that one physical moment.

What else are you looking forward to when quarantine is over?

SI: I have a complicated visa situation that is impossible to deal with during quarantine, so I have to just wait. So that. And also, I just want to dive into a body of water.

ÇT: I’m looking forward to being able to stop worrying about relatives, my father. Looking forward to that fear of illness and separation going away. And no more travel ban.

SI: And hugging people. Touching people and being able to hug them.

Çağlar Tahiroğlu is a conceptual artist and mental health activity manager for Doctors Without Borders

Sine Icli is a conceptual artist and owner of the ceramic brand Ophelia.

Sine Icli and Çağlar Tahiroğlu

Cel del Nord