Maryam Turkey’s creative design work is deeply rooted in the fusion of her family’s migration story and her passion for design across various mediums. Her practice is characterized as a quest to create functional and art objects that bridge sculpture and design, and bring her perspective as a designer to the user or viewer. “I like to think about people and I like to think about the user. I kind of alternate… taking a step back and capturing reality my way and in a way that is giving perspective to the viewer,” she says.

Migration as a Muse

Turkey was born in Baghdad, Iraq, where she lived until 2006, when her family fled to Damascus, Syria, amidst the political turmoil and war in Iraq. In 2008, Turkey and her family immigrated to the United States, settling in Maryland. Passionate about art from a young age, as a high school student she advocated to transfer from her public high school to an arts magnet school, where she would have the resources to study and pursue art and design in a supportive environment. Her experiences here helped to shape her early design philosophy, and lead her to attend the Pratt Institute for college.

Much of Turkey’s work revolves around the reclamation of symbolism and the deconstruction of patriarchal norms, particularly in the realm of architecture. To her, architecture symbolizes the cycle of power, with civilizations being built and wars subsequently destroying them to assert dominance. She seeks to subvert traditionally masculine constructs, by creating work at the precipice of construction and deconstruction, conveying a powerful humanity.

“My work embodies concepts shaped by my life experience, fostering an evolving philosophy that constantly challenges and refines my understanding of reality, all while I satisfy my unending curiosity by seeking answers within the creative freedom of my work,” she says.

A Vision Come to Life

Turkey’s approach to materiality sets her work apart; for many of her works, she crafts her own clay mixture using paper pulp, sand, pigment, and coatings, a nod to the clay architecture she grew up with in Baghdad. This unconventional choice stands in stark contrast to the conventional use of glass and unsustainable machine-made materials in contemporary architecture. It is a deliberate choice, a statement that echoes throughout her work.

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Her work “Between Rise and Fall” comprises paper-pulp objects and lighting fixtures that evoke the haunting emptiness of buildings in war-ravaged Baghdad, juxtaposed with the eerie silence of working in her studio in the downtown Manhattan at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. In “Between Rise and Fall” Turkey constructs a hybrid, imaginary cityscape that draws inspiration from two metropolises she has inhabited in times of personal and wider societal strife. “They felt like they echo the loss of human energy,” she says, “this juxtapositioning of reality and memory that sparks these ideas.”

In her practice, she constructs and works with armatures in foam, cardboard, and other materials that allow her to work quickly as she works through the design and art-making process. Turkey’s designs are a testament to her ability to meld diverse influences into a cohesive and thought-provoking body of work. 

“The best advice I have ever gotten was one I arrived to myself from my own experience and critical views. My advice is always to follow your intuition.”