Portrait and idendity problem in Turkish depiction art from Ottoman Empire to today

The history of Turkish illustrative arts is as old as time. Tuskish culture, through hundreds of years of migration and war, has come into contact with many other civilizations, and has evolved through these interactions without being assimilated. Starting with the earliest examples of depictions uncovered from the Uyghurs, artists with varying techniques have continuously created pieces that invite their audience to look at the human figure, while their work carried hints within that allow us to get a glimpse of their specific era, almost in a documentary sense. In this sense, the history of portraiture is also a narrator of how we perceive human-kind and its existence, in the sociological sense. In this work, I follow the tracks of illustrations from the Ottoman Empire to our modern times, as I strive to understand how the transition from a people's culture to an individualistic culture is portrayed in paintings. I look for answers to questions such as "How did the way we look at faces and bodies change as a representation of our perception of culture, class and gender?" I specifically focused my examination of our transition into the individualistic era through a study of a selection of avant garde Turkish artists who were not afraid to express their opposition, who displayed the ability to be in with their times without losing their authenticity, who fed from the human condition and identified with the issues of their respective times.