This text was written to accompany Esin Aykanat Avcı’s recent exhibition Prospect of Life at Simbart Project, which can visited between May 23-July 5, 2025, offering a perspective on the intersections of nature, technology, and human systems. It invites the reader to rethink familiar structures through the simple yet complex form of a leaf. This text is an invitation to slow down, to reconsider what seems familiar, and to imagine new ways of seeing the world.
Resonant Bodies
But the machines of nature, namely, living bodies, are still machines in their smallest parts ad infinitum. It is this that constitutes the difference between nature and art, that is to say, between the divine art and ours.
Liebniz, Monadology (§§ 64 Theod. 134, 146, 194, 403.)
What can a leaf represent today? Is it a machine, as Leibniz once suggested, or is it another living body lacking intellect, yet equipped with its own form of consciousness? What are the other possibilities to benefit from an ordinary leaf? These questions are bringing forth the never-ending clash between humans and machines, which has evolved into another one between humans and technology.
Humanity has been on the edge of an apocalypse, a milestone marking a shift from dysfunctional systems and reevaluating its existence to address today’s urgent matters. What is the role of an artist in remembering the interconnectivity among once-functional yet now dysfunctional systems?
Esin Aykanat Avcı has been proposing her answers to the role of an artist in today’s context through her artworks. Avcı has been focusing on bleaching the leaves she collects around. Her gesture is inspired by scientific research to develop a human heart that benefits from a spinach leaf, which has a vein structure similar to that of a human heart. She uses the same liquid used by scientists to remove chlorophyll from the leaves to prepare her medium, which appears dead; however, it still holds the potential for revitalization.
The artist prepares her installations with broken tree branches and pearlescent leaves. The installations are still, just like a sculpture; however, with appropriate intervention, the leaves can turn into a heart, gaining functionality. The artist invites the viewer to contemplate the balance between vitalism and mechanism by deconstructing the leaves themselves, which form the lit wall pieces that display the biological formations of several types of leaves, such as ivy, mulberry, and plane.
By exposing the linkages between vitalism and mechanism, the artist elevates the conversation to a broader—and perhaps more unsettling—reflection on humanity’s entanglement with its own creations. Just like a leaf is part of a tree, humankind is part of the systems it has developed, falling into a vicious circle of questions that reflect on whether these systems are “for humans” or “despite humans.”
Avcı looks for a response to this question in her new series. She traces the veins of leaves on a plain surface. These hand drawings mimic the natural formation of these thin lines. While extending the body of the leaf, she extends an imaginary organ across a different surface. Her gesture reflects a metaphysical approach to the potential of a simple leaf—one that resonates with larger questions of consciousness, system breakdown, and the blurred lines between life and mechanism.
Esin Aykanat Avcı combines art and science in her latest artworks, which reflect contemporary issues, challenge thoughts, evoke new questions about the prospect of life, and offer a fresh perspective for today’s needs. This exhibition invites the audience to witness a radical shift.
Burak Mert 