Rising Stars: Meet Belgin Yucelen

Today we’d like to introduce you to Belgin Yucelen

Hi Belgin, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
Imagination starts with a void and goes farther than the stars. I create imaginary worlds to help conjure these endless possibilities so we can all go beyond stars and dream, and create.

I float in the freedom of not belonging to any place yet I am my past. In my paintings, I sail along the wine-colored seas of the Bosphorus. In my songs, I walk the cobblestone streets of my first neighborhood. In my films, black and white photos of my family float on laundry lines along with my childhood dresses. At the same time, I get attached to people, and places in towns I pass. So, I invite them to be in my theater plays and poems as main characters. I adore and adopt the simplicity of Japanese aesthetics, the mysterious power of illegible Islamic calligraphy and the misty beauty of landscapes in Chinese paintings. I have an ineffable desire to feel at its deepest even if this might invite an amorous darkness, or else we float above the surface of life without going deep. This is why I talk about passion, desire, and love to inspire others to feel more. To further encourage imagination, I use silences, and empty spaces that create ambiguity, where the viewer can escape from the limitations of well-defined depictions. I like playing games; keeps the curious child in me happy. With a sense of mystery and humor, I ask the viewer to find out what is hidden behind, through revealing and concealing. I display my innermost secrets, even if it is vulnerable. Hence my desire for honesty.

The moon, fog, dusk, icebergs, conversations with friends, the night, and white peonies are a few of my favorite things. If anyone takes away my freedom to fly, I will slowly die. I am a dreamer.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The fear of failure might seem to appear like a challenge for an artist. Without this fear however, the world would be filled by art of satisfied artists with no urge to improve. The empty canvas might look daunting but only in this void imagination happens. Going out of the comfort zone of what we already know takes us to dangerous seas but only here we meet unfamiliar and exciting ways of making. Solitude, the art calls for, enhances intuition, helps us hear voices from within otherwise we wouldn’t, although it might seem heavy for some. The only “obstacle” for me is to reach out to more people’s minds. This, I find, most difficult.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am a Turkish-American multidisciplinary artist. I create film, installation, sculpture, theater, paintings and prints speaking to how the perception of time, dreams, subconscious, imagination and memory makes us who we are. With each story I tell, I ask the questions Who we are? and Where we are going? So together we can achieve basic human wisdom. I aim to dissolve the separation between us, and across time, distance and culture.

For example, for my short film, “Dream Room”, I reenacted dreams I borrowed to make these nocturnal fictions available to us. “Borrowed Stories” is a short film that allows the viewer to witness lives from 16 windows as if they are passerby during an ordinary evening. My theater play “Foggy Night” is about personalities in any city at any time. As they walk under the street lights, talking to themselves through an array of memories or confessions, a heavy fog settles in changing the way they see. In my installation “My memory seeks high meadows”, dreams, imagination, memory and subconscious are overlayed by transparent silk and paper paintings. I was granted a residency by Arctic Circle in Sweden in October, 2024. I will write a theater play on human psychology to inspire environmental activism, which will focus on how the grandiosity of the icebergs and their inconceivable impermanence change the characters bringing them together in face of mortality.

Networking and finding a mentor can have such a positive impact on one’s life and career. Any advice?
I consider everyone in my life a mentor.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://belginyucelen.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/belginyucelenartist/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/belgin.yucelen/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/belginyucelen