Hasan: the Doppelgänger

Hasan Aksaygın,

(b. 1986, Nicosia; the identity assigned at birth to Natis, bearing the gendered, national, and cultural inscriptions examined in Natis's practice) is a Cypriot painter who draws on collective and personal memory to critically explore the Eastern Mediterranean's ongoing struggles with Abrahamic, colonial, and nationalist legacies. His research-based practice spans paintings on wooden panels, sculptural objects, texts, (para-)fictional short stories, and archival materials. In particular, the intersections of Abrahamic theology with (Neo-)Platonic and Aristotelian thought serve as a core theoretical and aesthetic inquiry, reflecting on how these legacies still shape contemporary visual culture, not only through the ongoing historical invisible tension between iconodulism and iconoclasm, but also in how they serve as a constructive method for the gendered expressions inscribed on our bodies.