Kulttuurihistorioitsija ja taiteilija Hasan Fuat Sari vieraili viime maalis- ja huhtikuussa Macquarie Universityssä Sydneyssä. Macquarie järjesti samassa yhteydessä Sarin näyttelyn Visual Essays: Water and the Environment, joka saavutti paljon positiivista huomiota. Näin kirjoitettiin näyttelyn avajaistekstissä: ”Turkish-born Sari, who is from the University of Turku, Finland brings a new dimension to international culture through his sculptural works drawing upon his colourful life experiences to create unusual combinations of cultural art. Indeed, Sari himself refers to sculpture as an ‘international language’.  “And through it I speak to the world,” he says.

Sari’s artistic creations take the form of witty visual puns, drawing on traditional symbols and allusions of his experience and surrounding environment. His works incorporate a range of materials including metal, wood and brick, as well as scrap and recycled objects.

His wheel-suites – recycled and reshaped bicycles turned into multidimensional symbols of movements in time and space gives voice to the metamorphoses of identity, to tensions between intimacy and universality, to visions of becoming and transcendence.  His witty play with form and space also brings to mind the immaterial beauty of Ottoman calligraphy: sculpture and graphics at the same time where the wheel reads either as eye, sun, bull, movements of dance, a flight of the imagination, or a fanciful perpetum mobile – never just a wheel but often all of it in one.”