Ad Infinitum

AN ALLIANCE BETWEEN CULTURES Alia Üstek’s artwork is strongly associated with her life story. Not only with the exotic place of her birth, the place where she spent her childhood, but also with her later peregrinations - her stays in Great Britain and France, and - above all years spent in Poland. In a natural way she experienced and confronted various areas of culture, religions, systems of values, and philosophies of life. Therefore one of the pivotal aspects of her work is creating works of art that draw inspirations from different areas to show their diversity and beauty, and to convince viewers of the necessity of their permeation, coexistence, the need to go beyond the prejudices and stereotypes that limit the opportunity for mutual understanding.

The artist paints, draws, deals with graphic arts, creates stained glass. However, the field in which Alia Üstek has felt best for years is, besides painting, ceramics. Although she created many works that could be described as utility objects, each of them is, first of all, a unique work, each appeals to us with its unique aesthetics. ‘Utilitarian’ ceramics created by Alia Üstek amazes us by the diversity of inspirations, the way of connecting what is practical with absolutely creative ornamentation. Ceramic services with their original form refer to the traditions of the East (not only the Middle East, but also the Far East, which show a wide range of interests and the author’s numerous inspirations). Single dishes: jugs, vases, vessels additionally draw our attention to another source of the artist’s enchantment, which is the world of nature. The fascination with this world results not only in the shapes of the objects, but above all the rich decoration derived from forms found in nature, full of processed plant motifs, examples of marine fauna and flora, all the richness of Mediterranean nature. The multitude of the author’s experiences is manifested in the forms, colours, decorative and pictorial schemes. However, the most moving are the ceramic compositions that are related to human affairs.

Considering the canons of Muslim art, man should not appear in it at all. The art of the Levant, to which a large part of the works by Alia Üstek refers to, has preserved the durability and uniformity of forms developed centuries ago. Artists cannot depict animals and people. Thanks to this, the artists in this area have specialized in creating incredible ornamentation based on floral and geometric motifs, whose most sophisticated form is the Arabesque. Traditionally, decorations cover the entire surface of the object regardless of what it was made of. This tendency is also visible in architecture - the walls of many buildings are decorated with painted ceramic tiles. In some of Alia Üstek’s intricate compositions there are echoes of the magnificence of ancient Eastern civilizations. Combined together, richly ornamented surfaces of ceramic plates evoke an image of impressive friezes or stele-like tombstones, as if the examples of the art and architecture of Mesopotamia transferred from the past.

Particularly impressive are the figural compositions in which the echoes of the artist’s personal experiences can be seen. The works are divided into modules, the lines of division are clearly visible. They run in special places. The most astonishing are those that run below the heads of the figures, separating them from the body, as it happened in the old traditions of Persian and Turkish miniatures. In the Mediterranean area, the sense of structure and tectonics of sculptures was very important, already in prehistoric times - individual parts of human figures or vessels were clearly separated from each other, strongly marked. Here we can also observe a similar solution. Basreliefs by Alia Üstek are at the same time very decorative, in a way typical of the Art of the Orient. The action taken by the artist are compliant with the rules of Eastern art.

The artist points out that she does not create images, especially three-dimensional, of living people (only God has the power to create a human being). Alia Üstek’s figural compositions convey a synthetic message about the aspect of life that is important for the Arab world. The symmetrical layouts of figures illustrate the hierarchical division of roles in the family, the dominant position of the father, then subsequent wives and children. The artist did similarly in a series of painting works devoted to this motif, decorated at the bottom with ornamentation reminiscent of Arabic calligraphy.

In addition to Eastern inspirations, which may seem obvious, we recognize in these works numerous references to European art and its various traditions. The fact of choosing a human figure as a pictorial motif is significant here. The use of formal elements typical of the artistic formation of a work of art in the European Christian tradition can also be noticed here. The images of figures are slightly deformed, as if they were subjected to the medieval ‘law of the frame’. They lost harmonious proportions and naturalness. They are remind us of rough, unfinished works of the creators of Romanesque tympanums and column capitals. The works juxtaposed together refer to the form of polyptychs typical of art from centuries ago, the winged altarpieces, often displaying particular saints within the boundaries of their assigned planes.

Alia Üstek draws attention to one more area of inspiration - the art of the Byzantine icon. In her works, like in the eastern icon, the figures are presented frontally, as if suspended in a universal space, situated on a symbolic, monochromatic, often golden background. For the artist these original works are a kind of testimony of the presence of characters that she recalls from the past. And just like in the icon, where the way of presenting particular figural motifs was canonical and dependent on their significance, Alia Üstek tries to differentiate the degree of figures’ expressiveness, depending on how much they have been rooted into her memory and how close to her heart they were. Alia also admits the fascination with Byzantine painting when talking about some of the smaller drawings, in which she maintains the hieratic approach to characters, simplification of the image, a canonical gesture. She creates her own versions of this type of representations, preserving the features of the convention.

The artist is also the author of genre paintings and bas-reliefs. She features the characteristics of various aspects of everyday life in Muslim countries. She gives them the oriental attire, full of spontaneous colours and special mood, though she formally refers to the tradition of European art.

Alia Üstek treats art in a responsible way, not only in personal terms, as an imperative of expressing herself, communicating her own cultural, religious, existential or moral message, but also as a tool for the reconciliation of cultures and societies. As if she wanted to say that in these turbulent times, when different interests and values clash, only mutual cognition will give a chance for tolerance and peace. That is why she combines motifs developed by different traditions, often distant from one another.

The tendency to use elements of various conventions is also noticeable in her recent works of religious nature. The familiar Christian motifs are presented in her art by means of expression derived from many sources. The faces of biblical characters are depicted with a great deal of gentleness and love, as in the images typical of folk piety - this accent has been present for a long time also in ‘high’ art (e.g. in Murillo’s artwork) and in popular devotional art. In Madonna’s representations, they sometimes contrast with other parts of the composition, much richer, where we will observe not only a highly visible golden colour of the halo or part of the attire, but also the multicolored ornaments of the Mother of God’s robes, echoing with the oriental spirit.

In Alia Üstek’s artwork the religious factor is really important for creation of the vision of the world - regardless of whether it involves a gesture of affirmation or rejection. The artist’s approach to her work is extremely emotional. This is one of the reasons why many of her works are marked by expressiveness, explicitness of the conveyed message. The emotional involvement is for her a guarantee of ‘enlightenment’, the source of truth and love. Contacts with different cultures, the creative search enriched Alia Üstek, allowed her to consciously solve various

Dariusz Leśnikowski

Transl. Elżbieta Rodzeń-Leśnikowska





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