Zehra Ocal

About

Zehra Ocal is a Turkish/British artist born in Turkiye. As an immigrant artist, she has experienced displacement firsthand — a sense of dislocation that lies at the heart of her work. Her paintings explore space as something unfamiliar and unstable: at first empty, then increasingly charged by the figure’s presence, and ultimately defined by the shifting relationship between the two. She examines how the figure moves through this uncertain space, claims ground, and what is revealed in that negotiation. Space and figure are not in harmony; instead, they push against one another. The foreground and background are fluid — not fixed, but they are in constant dialogue, sometimes even in conflict. The figure often occupies a liminal zone, a “between space” where time and place dissolve, reflecting the emotional ambiguity of displacement. This instability is reinforced by the absence of clear spatial markers, creating a visual language rooted in fragmentation. Her work resists traditional notions of cohesion or resolution, mirroring the fractured realities of migration and dislocation. In a world shaped by conflict, forced movement, and division, the idea of a unified, harmonious surface feels inadequate. Her paintings reject compositional balance in favour of disruption. The surface becomes a contested ground where space, figure, and background struggle for presence. It is not a safe space — it is tense, unresolved, and alive with contradiction. That tension is vital. It keeps the work immediate, raw, and reflective of the complex, ongoing experience of displacement