Esen Kılıç, is a Turkish Canadian artist of Circassian descent from southern Russia based in the UK. Kılıç works with a varied range of media including painting, sculpture, installation, and correspondence art. Her work explores the prospect of an additional contemporary facet of the 20th century avant-garde movement Surrealism. The landscape, migration and movement each connect to what she titles a ‘surreality’. 

   ‘A surreality possesses all the imaginative, disturbing, bizarre and real qualities required to make sense of the confusion present in our world’s reality. It brings light to the fact that there exists multiple encounters of the surreal within experiences of migration.’ 

 The disposition of immigracy, for Kılıç, has developed a masked ideology through habit and relapse. ‘The more we see it on the news the less interesting, and more normal it becomes.’ she says. Similar to the notion of the surreal, migration is equally bizarre and disturbing in nature. Culture shock, racism, home-sickness are all surrealities that have been pigeonholed into the ordinary. However, the essence of migration and movement, when magnified, reveals a series of peculiar experiences. 

Kılıç’s personal experiences of moving across landscapes and studying in different countries as well as her family’s share relatable dialogues and are an integral part of the work. Overall, by pairing visually minimal elements, her work constructs portals of experience which the viewer is often either invited to step or dive into and co-produce with the artist. The viewer is not only a witness but also a participant in re-thinking the experience of migration triggered by satire or physical cues in the work. 

Instagram: @essiekilic