The sculptor Yaşam Şaşmazer explores what it means to be human beyond anthropocentric thinking, focusing on transformation, openness and becoming. Her series Seeds—ceramic, stoneware or patinated jesmonite sculptures—moves fluidly toward the Other, distancing itself from the human form and embracing ambiguity and open-ended potential. Clay, as earth, signals the cyclical processes at the heart of her practice. Their circular, core-like shapes generate a strong sense of transition and renewal. Rendered in warm, organic tones, the sculptures allude to the earth as both material and metaphor in Şaşmazer’s practice. Her formal language is marked by fragmentation and fluid transitions: torsos without heads or arms, folded backs like fabric, circular shapes recalling seeds or integuments. These abstract, biomorphic forms elude the certainties of traditional figurative sculpture, yet their sinuous contours still suggest protection, vulnerability and submission. Fragility here is not weakness but a dynamic state enabling growth, connection and reinvention. The works point to our mutual dependencies and the fragile systems underpinning even the most stable structures. Şaşmazer treats bodies as porous vessels rather than closed entities, making symbiosis and transformation tangible—an idea closely tied to posthumanist discourse. As philosopher Emanuele Coccia, a key reference for the artist, writes: “Undergoing metamorphosis means being able to say ‘I’ in the body of the Other.”

The sculptor Yaşam Şaşmazer explores what it means to be human beyond anthropocentric thinking, focusing on transformation, openness and becoming. Her series Seeds moves fluidly toward the Other, distancing itself from the human form and embracing ambiguity and open-ended potential. Their circular, core-like shapes generate a strong sense of transition and renewal. Rendered in warm, organic tones, the sculptures allude to the earth as both material and metaphor in Şaşmazer’s practice. Her formal language is marked by fragmentation and fluid transitions: torsos without heads or arms, folded backs like fabric, circular shapes recalling seeds or integuments. These abstract, biomorphic forms elude the certainties of traditional figurative sculpture, yet their sinuous contours still suggest protection, vulnerability and submission. Fragility here is not weakness but a dynamic state enabling growth, connection and reinvention. The works point to our mutual dependencies and the fragile systems underpinning even the most stable structures. Şaşmazer treats bodies as porous vessels rather than closed entities, making symbiosis and transformation tangible—an idea closely tied to posthumanist discourse. As philosopher Emanuele Coccia, a key reference for the artist, writes: “Undergoing metamorphosis means being able to say ‘I’ in the body of the Other.”