Banu Tulumen • Member since 2024
My practice is rooted in abstraction as a way of exploring emotional, psychological, and lived experience. I paint intuitively, allowing each work to evolve through layers of movement, texture, destruction, and reconstruction. Many of my paintings emerge from states of instability; moments where memory, identity, displacement, or transformation refuse to settle into a fixed form.
As an immigrant artist originally from Türkiye, painting became a way of reclaiming voice and space after years of silence and personal upheaval. I am particularly interested in the tension between chaos and structure, fragility and resilience, visibility and disappearance. These themes often surface through fluid motion, atmospheric forms, fragmented landscapes, and shifting spatial relationships.
My ongoing Threshold paintings inhabit spaces of emotional transition, where memory, longing, instability, and transformation remain unresolved and in motion. In recent years, my work has also expanded into conceptual series such as Reversible Vision, where paintings can be viewed in multiple orientations, altering narrative and emotional perception depending on how the viewer encounters them. I am drawn to the idea that meaning is never fixed, that perspective itself can transform what we believe we are seeing.
Working primarily with acrylics, mixed media, texture, resin, and unconventional materials, I approach painting as both excavation and discovery. I am less interested in illustrating an idea than in creating environments that invite viewers to enter emotionally, intuitively, and imaginatively.
The Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art represents something deeply important within the Okanagan arts community: a space where experimentation, contemporary dialogue, and artistic risk are genuinely welcomed. For artists working outside conventional expectations, spaces like the Alternator create room for curiosity, evolution, and critical engagement.
As an abstract artist, I value environments that encourage conceptual exploration and allow artists to push beyond traditional presentation or interpretation. The Alternator’s support of diverse artistic voices and contemporary practices contributes meaningfully to the cultural landscape of the region and helps foster connections between artists, audiences, and ideas.
My own work often explores instability, transformation, and shifting perception, so I feel aligned with spaces that embrace process, experimentation, and conversations around contemporary experience. I also appreciate the role the gallery plays in supporting emerging and established artists alike while helping create visibility for practices that may not always fit within more conventional exhibition structures.
Beyond exhibition opportunities, the Alternator represents community. It is a reminder that contemporary art can remain accessible, challenging, and deeply human at the same time. Being part of that ongoing dialogue feels meaningful to me both as an artist and as someone actively involved in supporting the arts within the Okanagan region.
