Aslier, Mustafa

In Aslier’s etching Our Mother, a stylized, frontal female figure holds a boy and a girl. Suspended in the sky above is a male/female face alluding to nature’s fecundity, which is underscored by the mother’s bare breasts and the field she stands in. Dressed in native Turkish costume, she wears a richly embroidered sash and an apron inscribed with lines from a folk song. The figures are bracketed by a plant and a turtle—recurring motifs in Aslier’s oeuvre that symbolize food and water, the stuff of life.