FEBRUARY 17TH, 2023
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Istanbul artist Leily Boom captures something some of us may be too young to remember, black light posters.
Black light posters were (are) fuzzy, black-matte, and radiate neon colors when under a black light. Some remain out in the wild but, with the saturation of screens in our daily lives, have lost their appeal.
Or have they?
Leily’s work manages to showcase the psychedelic colors and patterns with deeper thematic elements, “Everyone is special and has lots of color in them,” Leily says, “but you need to look carefully to see and understand we all are beautiful.”
A fashion designer in their professional life, color plays a pivotal role in her daily life exploring different combinations. But her use of flashing colors (while being mesmerizingly beautiful) is more about the celebration of our internal selves and the connectedness we share.
Each individual represented Leily's views as not being restricted by binary gender standards, “ I advocate gender neutrality. For all characters that I create I try to tell a story to people. I don’t want to separate them as men or women. Most of them appear feminine, but also psychedelic and colorful because our world is colorful with everything we have inside.”
Many of these feminine depictions represent gods: Iris, the Greek goddess of rainbows, Nix, the spirit of water, and Freyr, the god of peace and fertility. Each work connects to the others and speaks to the overall message of Leily’s work.
“There is a wise person named Mevlana, his philosophy is based on humanism and tolerance. It is to accept not only people but everything as they are, regardless of their characteristics. I grew up in an environment that dominated this view. For this reason, my life and art have progressed in this direction.”
No matter where we are in this digital world, Leily Boom reminds us that we are building something better, together as equals.
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