Early communities deified the natural phenomena they feared, felt helpless before and could not define. Over time these phenomena took on flesh and blood in myths and tales and turned into the character of the giant. Humankind magnified the difficulties it could not overcome and turned them into an extraordinary being that is hard to contend with.
In the tales the giant is a huge being with arms, legs and a body of frightening size. He harms people and puts obstacles in their way. Yet inside this vast frame lies a small mind that is easily fooled. When the hero discovers this weakness, he defeats him with his wits.
In our age technology has made problems very easy to solve. But being able to obtain everything easily has made people selfish and estranged. People consume everything unthinkingly and are preparing the end of the world. The fears that loomed like giants a few centuries ago have disappeared; now it is humans themselves who destroy everything like a giant.
The giant character I have shaped represents these old fears and anxieties. He has now lost his former strength. The club has fallen to the ground, the body has weakened, and a sorrowful expression has appeared on the face. As an aged and powerless giant, he makes us ask who the real giant of our age is.
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.