Lâl Yılmaz

Lâl Yilmaz worlds are both deeply personal but have a universality, inhabited by figures that are vessels of our shared human experience.

Yılmaz’s visual language links the works together where motifs are emotionally charged and recur, creating personal mythologies that chart an internal landscape. Her worlds are both deeply personal but have a universality, inhabited by figures that are vessels of our shared human experience. They emerge and disappear, existing between solitude and togetherness, self and other, to reveal the complexities of our inner lives. The title “As Above, So Below” suggests a spiritual and philosophical curiosity into the interconnectedness of all beings, while also embracing a sense of friction. Images emerge from the unconscious, creating an earthy patina across surfaces alive with textural mark makings. Yılmaz interprets the magic realism of life through her lens, something at once intimate and vast, familiar yet strange.

Lâl Yılmaz is a visual artist based in London and Istanbul, working across drawing, painting and printed textiles. Her practice unravels thought and emotion through an intentional yet spontaneous process, mapping the maze of her inner world. Drawing on a personal library of symbols, Yılmaz explores connection, an interplay of dualities and transformation. Colour, texture and gesture become instruments of a somatic inquiry where theatrical yet intimate engagements of figures create a narrative — layering the mystical with the everyday.

Yılmaz is currently undertaking The Drawing Year at the Royal Drawing School, London.

Image: Lâl Yilmaz for 8 Holland Street