Nigeria, Turkiye Diplomatic Ties Find Expression In Artistic Creativity

The diplomatic relations between Nigeria and Turkiye have found significant expressions through a distinctive artistic perspective.

Wife of the Ambassador of Turkiye to Nigeria Aysegul Poroy, an Associate Professor of Fine Art, made this known in an interview with LEADERSHIP; during the exhibition of a collection of diverse arts works she called New Nature at the Art Gallery of the Nigerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Abuja on Monday.

She said that “through a distinctive artistic perspective, New Nature explores how human-generated waste, reshapes the natural world, bringing together the beauty of Nigeria’s landscapes and environmental realities across the globe.

“I love the natural things in Nigeria, they are very beautiful, colorful and I started to express my feelings as a botanical practice, as an effort of a diplomat’s wife.

“I was motivated to do this as I use plastics and recycled materials to make artistic materials to depict our nature; the planet is beautiful just like my country and Nigeria. I love nature and to express this feeling I am using mostly colourful materials,” she added.

She said further that for over thirty years she has traversed a diplomatic life across different geographies and cultures and witnessed the ways in which nature is transformed through its encounter with human-made waste.

“This visual memory, extending from the vast and breathtaking landscapes of Nigeria to other parts of the world forms the foundations of the New Nature exhibition,” she said.

She added that in a rapidly digitizing world, human-made plastics exist within nature not merely as waste , but increasingly as part of the human presence within it, stressing that New Nature explores nature as it transforms and continues to exist through its encounter with plastic, interpreted through the eyes of an artist whose diplomatic life required constant movement from one place to another.

“Each layer represents more than a material, it evokes geography, an encounter, a sense of belonging and a place carried within memory,” she said.

The Curator, Nduwhite Ndubuisi Ahanonu said that Mrs Poroy’s practice is shaped by movement as the spouse of a Turkish diplomat, as she lived a life of postings, arriving, learning and new landscape and its people, and departing again,

“That mobility has also made her a witness across many countries; she has seen that same human habits repeated under different skies.

He added that in Nigeria two discoveries have shaped the work of the envoy’s wife. The first is stone and the dragonfly, two great experiences that have motivated her artistic creation.