I was born in Cyprus and my goal is to reflect problems of Cyprus and my love for nature and humanity with my ceramics, all of which shaped my soul like a handful of mud since childhood.

I was born in 1961 with my twin sister Semra Bayhanlı in the Küçük Kaymaklı area of Nicosia. My very first memory of myself is in 1963 during the war in Cyprus when we were wandering around with my twin sister among the tents prepared for the immigrants, looking at people in astonishment. I guess that was the moment when the facial expressions of people penetrated into our souls for the first time.

I had a childhood that was fully lived and experienced despite the financial deprivation of war… A warm hearted family with five children that was contented with little, but lived very gratefully… All these are because of the bright sun of Cyprus, the nature that was once unspoilt and the human relations that used to be as warm as island’s sun. I still remember the days we spent in the Aya-varvara village of Paphos every summer holiday; a wonderful farm life. This life style played a very important role in shaping my and my sister’s view of art.  For about twenty years, we continuously drew human body and facial expressions. We criticised each other and sought the right way.  We drew constantly – onto the roads using the plasters left from ruined houses, to the walls using the coal we picked up from burnt walls of the house that we migrated to, onto any paper we found laying around. With the wax our grandfather made from the honeycombs that remained from the honey he gathered, we experienced our first childish sculpture attempts which were very entertaining and educative.

During our youth, we joined many group exhibitions and in 1997 my twin sister and I had our solo painting exhibition. In the meantime, caricature entered into my life and in 1998 my caricatures were issued in the local Yeni Düzen newspaper. I joined many caricature exhibitions both in Cyprus and in overseas countries and in the following years, I carried my caricatures to my ceramics.

My interest in the three dimensional art grew and in 2000 I met with ceramics. From the moment I took mud in my hands, I started making sculptures and I opened my ceramics workshop, named Hanay, in The Big Khan in 2002. I started with sculptures of about ten centimeters that were hollow inside and gradually increased the size to match the real human dimensions. Last year my little ceramic sculptures were staged in the theatre play 'Truva Savaşı Olmayacak' of the Nicosia Municipality Theatre. The sculptures were placed inside a little city on the stage and were projected onto the screen behind the performers.

For more than a year, I have been making my large sculptures in the workshop in my house. My husband, Mustafa Çerkez supported me a lot. He built a large ceramic furnace in our garden, carried and fired my large sculptures which would otherwise be impossible for me to lift, and my ten sculptures were finally ready for my "Hanay" exhibition.

One of my biggest dreams was to have an exhibition in an old Cypriot house and with my "Hanay" exhibition, I placed and displayed my human sized sculptures; the sculptures that will always value compassion and will not lose their essence. My goal is to immortalize the Cypriot human mimics and characters that wars and other external forces couldn't destroy and to remind and share these values with people with my somewhat sorrow heart...

Sevcan Çerkez, 2007

2010 - EU funded project in Cyprus called “Women and Ceramics in northern Cyprus”, visited art organisations and artists in Finland and Netherlands.

2009 - Commonwealth Art Residency Award, 3-month artist residency in Cape Town, South Africa.

2007 - Tourism Monthly. Issue 34, June 2007. “Interview: A true artist encompassed within all her character”.

2007 - Defne Newspaper. Issue 4, May-June 2007. “Ceramic Sculpture Installation Exhibition”.

2006 - Open Studios within the Walls of Nicosia. November 2006. “Sevcan Çerkez”.

2001-2003 - Daily caricatures published in Yenidüzen Gazetesi (Yenidüzen Newspaper).