Melike Melenâ was born in Istanbul in 2000. She is currently pursuing a bachelor's degree in Graphic Arts at Anadolu University's Faculty of Fine Arts. In 2020, she founded the brand "Who," a collection of wearable artworks, and created sustainable clothing products from her work. In 2022, she assisted Mehmet Sinan Kuran in the "Nowhere" exhibition at Anna Laudel. During the summer, she coordinated and led children's art workshops at Art Istanbul Feshane. The artist, who directs the children's art unit of the Hayal Gücü Merkezi Association, organizes workshops for women and children in the field of alternative art education. She continues to produce in Istanbul and Eskişehir, conducting workshops for both corporate and personal use.
A letter, frozen on canvas with epoxy, traces the path of Nazım Hikmet's poem "In the Snowy Beech Forest." As the letters dissolve like a path melting into the fluid resin, they leave the viewer with words that stand the test of time. By writing about one's search for a home, some of the words have also disappeared, just as the house disappears. The work questions the tension between the transience of writing and the permanence of art through the material itself.
The vanished poem written on the work,
I don't know what it is,
I bury this painful pink,
As if I have no pain,
Because right now, if I were to call this love, I wouldn't be lying,
I wouldn't call it a stomachache,
It's not love at all,
A feeling that commits suicide through the windows, where happiness and sadness,
At the same time, all the colors and pitch darkness step side by side,
Like that thing that entered my life with a cloud, a house, and a few pieces of cobblestone,
Like not knowing what it is,
Letter, Acrylic on canvas, 33x19
