In March 2024, I presented my work at ArtAnkara International Contemporary Art Fair in Ankara.

An art fair creates a very different relationship between an artwork and its audience.

People move constantly between artists, galleries and hundreds of works. Attention is brief, immediate and impossible to control.

For an artist, this can be revealing.

I had spent months seeing these works inside the studio, knowing every decision behind them. At ArtAnkara, I watched people encounter them without any of that history.

Some walked past. Some stopped. Some came back. Some wanted to know more.

Those reactions reminded me of something simple but important: once an artwork leaves the studio, the artist can no longer determine what it will mean to someone else.

The conversations I had during the fair became as valuable to me as presenting the works themselves.

They allowed me to see my practice for a moment from the outside.

Making art is solitary.

Understanding what happens when it meets another person is not.