Sandra Cavdar

Born in Istanbul in 1966, Sandra Cavdar studied stage design at the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University between 1985-1989. After graduating, for a long period of time, she continued to work in costume and stage design for theater. Since 2017, she has participated in solo and group contemporary art exhibitions and fairs.

"Sandra Cavdar’s work locates itself within the space of memory, where its definition becomes entangled with the stuff of dreams and the weight of time. Moving through her work, one feels a sense of weightlessness, as if they could disappear completely, without any limitation of the body, any effort. Werner Herzog, in his 1999 manifesto, describes an idea of liberated truth: a truth that “is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination.” This detachment from ‘fact’ reveals itself throughout Cavdar’s work, where what is real is located in waves of fantasy and fiction.

Her work references lines from John Cage’s journal, for instance, “the buzz of small creatures.” This buzz reveals itself as a web of connections between beings, each at the center of its own universe. There is a continuous fluttering throughout, capturing the sonic instant of a bee landing on a windowsill, or the unraveling of a parachute, certain mutable interactions with the wind. Gazing at her paintings, the viewer feels a sense of transportation, as if they’ve recovered a lost or hidden map. Without complete trust, these maps ask us to follow them into unimaginable worlds, and it is their sincerity that makes us say yes.

Employing a range of materials and methods, she reveals the difficulty of coming to terms with these fleeing multitudes, while at the same time creating a locale for their phantasmagoric uncertainty. Weaving together mythological landscapes with the stuff of this earth, she brings her viewer into a space where dancing bears coexist with people waiting for trains, where migrating giraffes coexist with wingless angels. 

Her paintings become alternative monuments to the distinct sorrow experienced by a psychic sense of displacement. They engage with the fantastical notion of great migrations, where geographic boundaries become almost mythological spaces. The colossal movement of animals comes through strongly in her dreamlike landscapes as an emblem of emotions the human mind places upon the things it doesn’t know how to define. Cavdar takes us through a stream of consciousness world, where loneliness is a universal trait of togetherness."

Keyla Cavdar


/products/festina-lente
5091864969355
Festina Lente
festina-lente
/products/cum-grano-salis
5091864739979
Cum Grano Salis
cum-grano-salis
/products/paco-piu-paco-mano
5091865690251
Paco Piu, Paco Mano
paco-piu-paco-mano
/products/violent-absence
5091865919627
Violent Absence
violent-absence
/products/royal-wedding
5052012986507
Royal Wedding
royal-wedding
/products/le-petit-prince
5091866771595
Le Petit Prince
le-petit-prince
/products/paradise-lost
5052017082507
Paradise Lost
paradise-lost
/products/vive-la-bagatelle
5091864313995
Vive la Bagatelle
vive-la-bagatelle
/products/we-are-going-nowhere
5052005744779
We Are Going Nowhere
we-are-going-nowhere
/products/suspended-animation
5091863625867
Suspended Animation
suspended-animation
/products/paper-bride
5091886792843
Paper Bride
paper-bride
/products/the-new-one
6590703337611
The New One
the-new-one
/products/consultation
6639181136011
Consultation
consultation
/products/untogether
6639182446731
Untogether
untogether
/products/no-longer-members
7117424951435
No Longer Members
no-longer-members
/products/untitledsandra
7117425508491
Untitled
untitledsandra
/products/untitled-ii-3
7117432750219
Untitled II
untitled-ii-3
/products/untitled-iii-2
7117434781835
Untitled III
untitled-iii-2
/products/pierrot-and-butterfly
7117435895947
Pierrot and Butterfly
pierrot-and-butterfly