I have done a painting about a story spread and popularized by the meme culture which I interpreted in a contemporary way by using the formalism of Islamic art. By doing this study, I wanted to focus on how storytelling has evolved from the 17th century Ottoman Empire to the present and wanted to point out to the similarities, differences, and contrasts between this two creation, production styles and methods.
I benefited from the formal features of Islamic art in my work. I included gold and Islamic geometric shapes in the frame. I found a typeface that looked like calligraphy and used it for the text. I drew symmetrical ornaments around the text. As a style, I drew clouds inspired by Chinese painting techniques, and specifically, I tucked the clouds out of the frame a bit. While drawing the carpet, I didn't want to give depth and dimension on purpose, so I showed it in a rectangular shape and put Islamic geometric shapes on it. I used colors and tones that we often encounter in Islamic paintings, especially in the clothes of the characters which are green and blue. This green symbolises divinity in Islamic art paintings and I used this color for the reporters dress.
As for the story, I drew, a few years ago, when a TRT reporter visited the 100-year-old grandmother and grandmother bit the reporter's hand while she was interviewing, it was an event that became very popular on social media and spread very quickly. It was first published as a video and spread on social media, and then a frame was cut from the video, text was written on it, and it was converted into a meme and shared and reproduced in this way. One of the reasons I chose this topic is that I want to focus on the similarities between memes and single-page paintings in terms of containing text-images and conveying stories as part of oral culture, as well as the contrasts in style, subject, sharing, and consumption.