27-year-old painter Kasım Tan paints the suffering in order to raise awareness against the Israeli attacks in Gaza.
In front of Üsküdar Valide-i Cedid Mosque, Tan, who painted his 9 meters by 3 meters painting titled “Gaza”, aims to support Palestinians with his work.
Tan, who was inspired by Pablo Picasso’s “Guernico” painting, said in a statement to AA correspondent, “As a young artist, I was concerned about expressing the horror experienced. After getting permission from the Mufti’s Office and the General Directorate of Foundations, we prepared our canvas. Then we put it here and started drawing.”
“This work is actually a 21-day act of drawing”
After the Israeli army’s attacks on the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023, Tan said that he had been in seclusion for a long time with the thought of “What can I do against this genocide?” and that he decided to make his work after the seclusion process.
The young painter stated that he mostly painted portraits, and in his Gaza work, he tried to depict the striking facial expressions of the people of Gaza.
Stating that he focused on the expressions of people in the work, Tan gave the following information:
“Here, I want to transfer the expressions that we remember and cannot forget in Gaza to the canvas with hard lines and bring them eye to eye with the viewer. I gave myself 21 days. After drawing roughly for the first two weeks, I will go into detail for the remaining one week. I will use red paint in places. This work is actually the 21-day drawing action of a 27-year-old young artist. I have no idea where the work will take me.”
Noting that he has been preparing a series of paintings called “Mayhem” for about 5 years, Kasım Tan said, “This series is a series in which black and white figures gather in a space and witness each other’s horror. The drawings I make in my normal life are frightening to people. Because hard lines and harsh expressions disturb the viewer. Of course, I can also say that people can suppress some of their feelings in the face of an existing massacre. But when they see them on a canvas when they least expect it, they can react involuntarily.”
“The silence of our artists pushed me to this situation”
Emphasizing that he wished more famous painters would do this kind of work, Tan said, “The silence of our artists pushed me to this situation. In fact, here I am fighting an individual fight on behalf of both our artists and my nation. I am glad to be the pioneer of this. Because the artist needs to be a little crazy, and the fact that I left my own studio and am drawing here for 9 hours on a canvas with people also opens my perception.”
Emphasizing that he will set up a tent in the field in the last week of the work and aims to finish the painting by working day and night, Tan said:
“There will be something about hope in the painting, but the flow is such that I need to think about the placement on the canvas and I need to think about the front-back, perspective relationship of the figures I will use with other figures. I have some anecdotes and sketches in my head. But it is difficult to place these sketches immediately. After drawing for half an hour here, I sit and think for another half hour. This work is also a work that can go down in the history of art, that can be criticized, and I try to take serious care of this work. In other words, I approach it with mastery. I am actually transferring a series that I have been working on for a long time to a huge canvas. It is tiring to create something that can capture the audience.”
Explaining that he received very good reactions from those who watched him in Üsküdar square, the young painter said, “There were those who left pocket money, those who brought water, those who said ‘are you hungry, let’s bring food’. Honestly, there are many people who appreciated it. There are those who said, ‘Well done, I am proud of you. As I said, this work is also an expression of the conscience of our society. I will leave a will after this work, and this will is that when Palestine gains its freedom, this work should go to Palestine.”
After completing the work, Tan plans to open a painting exhibition on Palestine.
