Nida Erdoğan was born in Istanbul in 1999.

After graduating from the Painting Department at Namık Kemal University, she began her graduate studies at Yıldız Technical University's Institute of Art and Design. Working in painting, ceramics, sculpture, and site-specific installations, the artist constructs a universal narrative based on her personal experiences in her works centered on the concepts of trauma, memory, and the uncanny. Her childhood phobia of birds became apparent through the images of dead birds in her early works. While these images initially formed part of a personal confrontation, they eventually opened the door to an inquiry into collective memory. In recent years, she has turned to the knot form as a narrative language. Knots appear in her works as metaphors for unresolved, repressed, or postponed emotions. Erdoğan aims to make visible the traces left by trauma in memory through visual language and to transform personal experience into a universal inquiry.

The artist's bird phobia, which stemmed from childhood trauma, and the knot form are not only the decipherment of a personal memory but also a map of the human collective unconscious. Here, the knots bear the traces of a social pathology: Societies' unresolved traumas become tangled in individuals' neural networks and crystallize in their bodies.

The artist's creative practice stems from a traumatic childhood experience. Dead bird bodies, which emerged as a visual projection of bird phobia, gradually transcend individual fear and become a metaphorical narrative about humanity's relationship with nature, death, and destruction.

In her recent works, the artist has sought to express this traumatic memory not only through bird imagery but also through the knot form. The knot symbolizes the intertwined structure of repressed emotions, unresolved thoughts, and bodily memory. This form, driven by the tension between dissociation and resistance, positions the viewer on a threshold, oscillating between consciousness and the unconscious.

In this context, the artist aims to transcend individual trauma and transform the knot form into a symbol of a universal emotion. "A Tranquil Chaos" is a simplified yet intense visual depiction of the internal knots that manifest differently in each individual. This work becomes a quiet and layered representation of collectively experienced psychological entrapment.

A Calm Chaos 2, oil on canvas, 50x60 cm, 2025