Aylin Zaptçıoğlu's Gardens

''I've been into etching for a while now. Although limited by my own knowledge and resources, for years it has been a place I return to whenever I seek balance in my artistic production. (I've always loved the little surprises that pop up, even with all its strict rules.) ​

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For the past few years, I had also been seeking connection and nourishment outside of working alone in my own studio. Things like experimenting with new materials or sharing a workspace... This collaborative process at Derin’s studio was exactly what I had been hoping for. Having a master printer guide me taught me a ton. Plus, it was just really satisfying to figure things out together and enjoy the whole process of of co-creation. 

 

Before working with Derin, I didn't really have a set theme or project in mind. We decided to just go with the flow, playing around with materials and techniques and seeing what would happen. I wanted to try a different technique on every plate and just build on whatever happy accidents came out of it. 

 

‘Dim Garden’ (Loş Bahçe) was one piece I actually planned out a bit more beforehand. But even then, right after the first step, we randomly decided to switch from white paper to black and worked in the negative instead. This changed the entire emotion of the piece; I could even say it allowed us to capture the true atmosphere of the image. 

 

In other words, it wasn't just an exercise in directly translating my visual language into etching, but simultaneously a quest to discover what etching could add to my work and what those new possibilities might be. ''

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Aylin Zaptçıoğlu

2026