Tuğçe Balcı was born in 2001 in Kadıköy, Istanbul. Between 2016 and 2019, she received art education in various independent studios, shaping her creative practice from an early age. In 2024, she graduated from the Painting Department of Hitit University, Faculty of Fine Arts and Design. She currently continues her artistic production as a 5th-term participant in the “A Year in the Passage” program, organized by İyilik İçin Sanat Derneği (Art for Goodness Association) and hosted by DenizBank Headquarters.

In her work, the artist explores the layered connections between memory and the destruction of space. In her “Ruin Series”, she focuses on abandoned structures, the erosive nature of time, and the spatial projections of memory. Through materials like concrete, iron, and fabric—both solid and porous—she constructs a threshold between the physical and the mental.

In her recent works, she builds imaginary and utopian worlds that depart from reality. In these realms, time is not linear but circular; memories are not fixed but scattered. She invites the viewer into a state of consciousness that drifts between the familiar and the strange. The collapse of architecture is interpreted not merely as structural destruction, but as a mental dissolution.

Her paintings do not simply ask the viewer to look, but to remember. These works attempt to form a new visual mode of thinking from the remnants of the past. They are meditations on meaning that emerges from ruins, on existence sprouting from emptiness.

“Ruin ​​Series”

2024, Mixed Media on Canvas, 40×80 cm