Heidi Trautmann

126 - Sevcan Cerkez in Cape Town
3/5/2010

 

Sevcan had been granted a residency in Cape Town organized by the Commonwealth Foundatıon  (which selected her work as 6th out of 430!) for three months starting in January 2010 where she now works at a ceramic factory under the auspices of the Cape Town university together with artists, a) her own work, to show and share with others, and b) where she will be taught two subjects she has chosen, that is the process of bronze and wax sculptures.

For her it is the very first time to be out of her country all by herself for such a long time. But she will not be alone. There is a Cypriot Turkish artist living in Cape Town, a friend of ours, and also an international crowd of artists, and among artists you are never alone because you do the same kind of work, that is creation, and that is a common language by itself. This is what I told her before she left.

Sevcan and I have been keeping in touch over the last few weeks; Now in February she has finished the sculpture of one African woman and works on her second. The studio is in a ceramic factory with lots of space and nice people. There she has found a kiln big enough to accommodate her man-size sculptures.  She is very happy among her artist friends and they exchange experiences and traditions. In her last letter she wrote that she reads the future for her friends out of the Cyprus coffee she makes regularly. The girls in the factory are thrilled and they come to her to have their daily future read.

Sevcan visits exhibitions where she meets with a lot of local artists. One Lisa Claassens, a ceramic artist invited her to her studio to hold a workshop for other artists and friends to share her technique. Sevcan has become famous.

The sad aspect of her experiences are the still existing social discrepancies between poor and rich, they are extremely wide.

In her free time she roams about in Cape Town, what a fascinating town this is, she wrote. I will hear more from her.

Here are some photos of her works, her two sculptures finished waiting to dry and for the kiln. I had given the text and the photos to ZOOM magazine. The article will be published in the next issue which is the March issue – this time with a new name Zoom IN for the English version. The Turkish version will be published next month.

We are now waiting for her news about the exhibition and her new experiences. All our love to her from Cyprus.

Heidi Trautmann

































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