Derya Ozparlak is a Toronto-based artist working in sculpture, mixed media and installation. She graduated with a BFA in Sculpture from the Faculty of Fine Arts at Anadolu University in Turkey with an honours degree. Derya has participated in numerous groups, solo exhibitions, art fairs and symposiums in Toronto, Istanbul,  Chicago, Almeria of Spain, Beirut, Berlin, NYC and Palermo of Italy. She has brought artworks into life as a full-time artist since 2006. 

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The Deranged

This is about the self-awakening and coming to one’s senses phase of a well-educated, high level, white collar businessman, stuck in the wheels of the capital system, he realizes that he has been actually wearing a straight jacket. The past imprints its tracks on our bodies, minds and souls. In this case, his tie is still on, symbolic of the transformation of Kafka’s Gregor Samsa character. One morning when he wakes up, my character has straight jacket straps and a tie, similar to Gregor’s antennas
and legs of an insect. 

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Our Pathetic Perspective

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In the vein of Jose Saramago’s novels “Blindness” and “Seeing” I tried to embody the beginning of an awakening phase from imposed ignorance. Everyone goes about their daily lives with blindness whether they know it
or not, whether they live in a free society or an autocratic one. Our knowledge and quality of life is filtered one way or another by the
powers that be.

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Breaking News

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“ The power of the lectern is an essential fact in every society. This cleverly designed platform, which would sublimate the speaker and constructs a set between the speaker and the audience due to its design characteristics, has the power to put across whatever is told in face of the person or persons. Even though these living, colourful microphones seem to be so happy, honest and representative, they are the protagonists of the lies said on this lectern. Microphones, lectern and the speaker
are the trivets of all these lies. Every time we stand in wonder and gasp at this harmony whispering, “ This time can it be true?”

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