Turkish artist Deniz Sağdıç creates stunningly detailed portraits out of pieces of denim, using the different available shades of fabric to highlight even the tiniest details.

Deniz Sağdıç grew up surrounded by arts and crafts. Her father was a stained glass master, her uncle was a carpenter and a wood sculptor, her aunts worked as tailors, so she was exposed to art from a very early age. Ever since primary school, she spent a lot of time in her father’s workshop, helping him prepare the materials and cut his stained glass windows. She also spent a lot of time in her aunts’ tailor shop, discovering the secrets of the trade. So it didn’t really surprise anyone when the decided to go to art school.

After graduating from Mersin University’s Faculty of Fine Arts, Deniz Sağdıç decided to move to Istanbul and open her first workshop. During her first years as an artist, she focused on painting on canvas, exploring the boundaries of materials such as oil paint and acrylics. But soon she realized that there was an aspect of this art that really bothered her…

“This type of art had an elitist attitude appealing to a certain social segment,” Deniz told Turkish website Dunyabizim. “More precisely, classical art forms, such as oil painting, have been appealing to a certain type of society since the past. I understood that it was necessary to find different solutions to bring art to a much wider audience.”

Sağdıç shunned traditional art and started experimenting with all sorts of media, in a project she named “Ready-ReMade”. She worked with all sorts of familiar objects that people use in daily life, like cassette covers, old coins, encyclopedias. That’s when she realized that when people see art made with familiar materials, they are much more drawn to it. That’s how she settled on denim.

“Imagine a product made by human hand that it is easily adopted and used from the youngest to the oldest regardless of cultural or economic status, country or geography. In our history of civilization, where even skin color can be the subject of dissociation, unfortunately, there is nothing else like denim that has eliminated all borders. For me, denim is like a unique way to remind people of what is in their essence,” Deniz Sağdıç explained her fascination with denim.

When creating her amazing denim portraits, Deniz makes sure not to waste any piece of it. She has pieces where she uses only the waistband of the jeans, others made only with the pieces around the buttons, and even some made with whole pairs of jeans. She cuts the leftover parts into whatever shapes she needs, and uses them to make other artworks.

In the beginning, Deniz Sağdıç used jeans bought from second-hand and thrift shops, and even denim clothing from her own wardrobe, but as her project grew, she got in touch with a Turkish denim company. They were thrilled to work with her and provide all the raw material she needed, and today she has multiple partners, so she is never short of denim to work with.

When starting a project, Deniz chooses a photo she wants to replicate, prints it in a large format and starts selecting appropriate denim by tone. The Turkish artist has developed eight different techniques of making denim portraits, like spiral technique and clipping technique, so the last step is deciding which technique to opt for.

Deniz Sağdıç works about 16 hours a day, sometimes leaving her workshop at 2 in the morning. Her denim portraits can take between two days to a month to complete, depending on size and complexity.

Deniz’s denim art reminded me of Denimu, the similar art form developed by English artist Ian Berry.