In Turkish culture the dervish type has a religious foundation; in Turkish folk tales dervishes are spiritual figures, the heroes’ most important helpers. They appear before tale heroes who are in trouble and in need of help, assist them and make their wishes come true.
The most frequent motif in the tales is the granting of the wish of a hero who has no child. The dervish gives the hero an apple and so enables them to have a child. The apple is a symbol both of abundance and of the continuation of the line.
This quality is brought to the fore in the dervish character I have shaped as well. The dervish is depicted holding out two red apples in his palms. His bearing is very plain and simple. He is barefoot, far removed from worldly goods. The light, pure surface given by the white opaque glaze firing emphasises his purity.
The relief of a baby seen through the window-shaped niche at the front of his robe is the sculpture’s most powerful symbol. It is not the dervish himself but the very dream of the child the hero longs for. The dervish is an intermediary; he grants the miracle but is not its owner.
Passed down from generation to generation in Anatolia’s oral culture, folk tales are not merely fantastical stories; they carry a society’s fears, hopes, transformations and shared memory.
“The Memory of Tales” reinterprets characters such as Şahmaran, the Zümrüdüanka, Keloğlan, the giant, the giant’s mother, the sultan and the prince in the language of contemporary ceramic sculpture.
Shaped by hand, each figure goes beyond its appearance in the traditional tale and becomes an original work of art carrying its own symbolic meaning and story.