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One eye, if you like on the art historical past. refik s work here may be linked directly to the bosphorus, but it relies on the backrooms of silicon valley in california, a few hours from los angeles, where he now lives and works. decades earlier, another pioneering turkish artist was connecting east with west, and creating her own kaleidoscopic visual worlds. fahrelnissa zeid is a centralfigure in the story of modern turkish art. but despite being born at the dawn of the 20th century, she s only being truly appreciated now. yeah. pleasure to have you here. i m meeting chief curator oyku ozsoy sagnak to talk me through this zeid s mesmerising and explosive masterpiece of swirling red and yellow painted shards. the first thing is that sort of sense of it being almost all encompassing.
It feels like. yeah. ..you could go into it. it s almost like this sort of net that you could get caught up in. but when you sort of take a step back, the way it s been composed, it has these different zones. there s a yellow part with very, very intricate almost thorny parts to it on the left. and then, in the middle, there s this kind of. this void. yeah. this sort of black hole in the centre. yeah. yeah, absolutely. i know it s called my hell. yes. what s she referring to? in fact, fahrelnissa zeid suffered from depression throughout her life. and while sitting in her studio one day, the movement of a fly catch her eye. and then she kind of felt that this movement reflected life. i mean, it s a kind of inspiration for her. so, because all of these many different lines seem to interconnect and go away, and there s an almost random quality to it. but you re saying that on one level, the spark for that was seeing the random movements of a fly buzzing about the studio? yes, absolutely.