Exploring the paradox of wholeness feels wrong, this work visualizes the absence of absence. A doughnut that fails to form its hole. The piece manipulates light and shadow to erase depth, creating a seamless yet uneasy fullness.


Merve Kurtuluş, 2025, moving Image 
(Single-Channel video looped)
 wholeness feels wrong asks: do wholes need holes? How does incompleteness create meaning? Instead of depicting absence as a visible void, the work treats absence as something not yet — a sealed surface where a thin crack begins. This limited crack is a vector of hope, the first possibility of an opening, so the journey is one of anticipation, not despair.

AI is both method and argument. Technology is material and collaborator, forced against its own completion bias — suppressing depth cues and shadows through fast constraints and unnaturally orienting the geometry toward a seamless torus. Using a system optimised to fill and perfect, to prevent completion, reflects the concept: when incompleteness never arrives, identity stops. The work opens a small, shareable space where perception and meaning can begin — the hope of finally meeting myself.

 Merve Kurtuluş is an Istanbul-based artist exploring the intersection of artificial intelligence, visual culture, and critical theory. Currently pursuing an MA in Art History at Istanbul Technical University, their thesis examines the art of artificial intelligence. They also lead workshops on AI-assisted creativity, translating technical processes into accessible artistic methods. Merve draws on a decade of experience as a copywriter and creative director. Their work has appeared in Cakes of Codes (Istanbul, 2025), Sacred Data at Cluster Photography & Print Fair (London), Post Narrative with Mehmet Sinan Kuran, and at Soho House Istanbul for Istanbul Blockchain Week.

@merve.ai