The Flower Inside Me

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The Flower Inside Me

2019
Drawings
Ink on paper
27 × 17 in. (68.58 × 43.18 cm)
Purchased with funds provided by Hilary Leavitt and Jamie Babbit (M.2023.18)
Not currently on public view

Curator Notes

Although best known for her large-scale wire and wood works, Semerciogˇlu initially trained as a painter and continues the practice, as seen in The Flower Inside Me....
Although best known for her large-scale wire and wood works, Semerciogˇlu initially trained as a painter and continues the practice, as seen in The Flower Inside Me. Her interest in the living world, including flora, fauna, and the human body, is apparent in the biomorphic shape at the center of the composition. Its many layers and wispy edges evoke the interior of a flower, while the use of blood red recalls the artist’s own body, alluded to in the title. The divide between flower and body depicted in Semerciogˇlu’s painting is deliberately ambiguous, perhaps suggesting that the separation between the natural world and the human body is similarly porous.
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Bibliography

  • Komaroff, Linda, Stephanie Rouinfar, Sandra Williams, and Sarah Mostafa Ahmed. Women Defining Women in Contemporary Art of the Middle East and Beyond. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2023. https://archive.org/details/women-defining-women (accessed January 12, 2024).