The Endless Loop in My Mind by Seçil Koman
Prose and paintings by Seçil Koman
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I begin walking up the spiraling stone steps, one by one. The deep crack that splits the fifth step in half winks at me. This time, I am careful not to trip on it, and continue on…
In her artist’s book The Endless Loop in My Mind, NYC-based Turkish artist Seçil Koman uses prose and paintings to channel the remembered palette and contours of her grandmother’s apartment in Izmir during childhood summer holidays: Heart Apartments, Unit Four.
I take another step. Right in front of me is the brown apartment door with its burgundy doorknob. No. 4. From the sound of her orthopedic house slippers, I can tell my grandmother is walking toward the door. With a little thrill, I ring the bell. Its jingle intermingles with the chirping of the birds in the center of my chest. The door opens in time to the twittering of the birds.
As she describes her grandmother’s apartment—with its grape-flavored balcony, ballad-playing radio, and cocooned wardrobe—Koman’s prose (translated, from the Turkish, by Anna Wood) combines the tingling expectancy of E. Nesbit and Perecquian attention to detail to probe formative childhood memories of spaces once synonymous with security.
In a single motion, I am hugging my grandmother. My eyes are shut tight, and I inhale the scent of her floral shirt. I am welcome.
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2022
Edition of 400
Translated, from the Turkish, by Anna Wood; listen to Anna read an extract from The Endless Loop in My Mind
56 pages, 12×17 cm, color offset, sewn & glued
Printed on Arctic Munken Print Cream 115 and Pure Rough 300
Edited and designed by Sevinç Çalhanoğlu
ISBN 978-83-962620-9-7
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Seçil Koman is an interdisciplinary artist and educator, born and raised in Turkey and now based in New York. Inspired by her experiences, and the interiors and societies she has moved through, she writes and paints in her studio using descriptive narration and stream of consciousness. The Endless Loop in My Mind is an expression of the traces that Seçil’s childhood memories, impressions, and observations have left on her.