Contemporary Turkish painting in the contex of self-portrait

This thesis approaches self-portraiture in contemporary Turkish painting not merely as the depiction of a face, but as a multilayered field through which the artist expresses their existence, identity, and relationship with the era. The self-portrait is considered a form of expression that reflects not only the artist's introspection but also the social, cultural, and political ruptures of the time. The study analyzes prominent examples of self-portraiture in post-1980 Turkish art within thematic and historical contexts, reading each self-portrait as both an individual insight and a component of collective memory. The theoretical framework draws upon Erving Goffman's concept of "self-presentation" shaped by the front stage–backstage dichotomy, Carl Jung's theory of archetypes, Jean-Paul Sartre's existential subject, and Michel Foucault's understanding of the subject shaped within power relations. This intellectual foundation serves to question how the body, gaze, and space gain meaning in self-portraits. For visual analysis, Erwin Panofsky's iconological method is employed to reveal the historical and symbolic layers behind formal elements on the surface. In the context of contemporary art's evolving forms of expression shaped by digitalization, artificial intelligence, and body technologies, the study also explores the impact of posthumanist approaches on self-portraiture in contemporary Turkish art. In this regard, new forms of selfhood—detached from fixed and unified identities and defined through multiplicity, permeability, and technological interfaces—are addressed. The self-portrait is thus considered a space where identity is reconfigured in the posthuman era.