Yakışıklı Oğlum

Yakışıklı Oğlum, 2025

“Yakışıklı Oğlum” is a series that presents portraits of men placed in childish, kitschy, and gaudy picture frames. The decorative borders symbolise the way some mothers continue to view their sons: as eternally perfect, innocent, and handsome, no matter what they've done or become. The phrase “Yakışıklı Oğlum” ("My Handsome Son") is even misspelled on many of the frames, but that distortion goes unnoticed, camouflaged by the deeply distorted gaze of parental idealisation.

This project challenges a cultural narrative many of us know all too well: the myth of the untouchable golden boy. He is the pride of the household, endlessly praised for his looks, his manners, his supposed goodness. Yet behind this glorified image often hides a more troubling reality of men who ghost, cheat, manipulate, harass, and sometimes even harm. And still, they are excused, defended, forgiven because “he’s a good boy.”

Through satire and symbolism, this work exposes how dysfunction is mistaken for charm, cruelty is rebranded as charisma, and plain mediocrity is elevated to greatness under the warm filter of unconditional maternal love.

No, your son is not perfect.
No, he is not the most handsome man in the world.
And yes, he might be the problem.