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Time flows differently in a meyhane. Rakı is sipped slowly, meze is shared without haste, and as one conversation leads to another, subjects and perspectives deepen.

Since 2016, I have been going to meyhanes with my notebook. I choose a table, lay my own spread, and draw. I work with watercolour and pen on paper. Through my paintings, I create a visual memory of this culture of the table, gathered around olive oil, rakı, meze, and conversation, from a deeply personal and intimate place. I am especially fascinated by the tradition of being a regular.

In my culture, the meyhane is coded as a male space. Although I spent much of my university years in the meyhane my mother ran, I still feel a slight tension when I sit alone in one as a woman. But I trust in this: in meyhanes, people do not look at one another. Each table becomes absorbed in its own conversation. In this way, I become invisible and do my work without becoming the subject of anyone’s gaze.

The distance between tables, the way one person leans towards another, glasses being emptied, waiting plates, light moving across the table, the ways bodies draw closer to one another, and the invisible movement of conversation create new forms in my notebook. Rather than making individual portraits of people, I record the relationships between them and the temporary world that forms around the table.

Meyhane culture also has a strong place in the history of literature and art. The tables of poets, writers, and painters have been places not only for drinking, but also for writing, drawing, talking, and thinking together. I look at this tradition from another position, as a woman painter sitting alone.

The “Meyhane” series began in Türkiye and is still ongoing. I would like to continue it in Greece, Lebanon, and other places too. Their cultures of the table and conversation are close to one another, but not the same. These questions excite me: how do being a regular, togetherness, and time slowing down take shape in another language, and how do they make me feel? When all of this comes together, what will my notebook tell me?