The Tree by the River / Arda Boylari 

Diameter: 22 cm, Material: Stoneware, Porcelain, Pigment

Exhibited at HOME: Art Exhibition by Art Studio Amsterdam, 2026

Home is not a place, but a memory in motion,

the pulse between two hearts.

You are the soft ground I grow from,

the song that remembers me.

Wherever you are, there is home.

In this work, home is not a place but people: now a partner in Amsterdam, before a sister in İstanbul, previously a grandmother sitting by the fire.

This specific memory of her, knitting socks on a pillow, singing an old song about a tree by the river, tears falling as she sang..

The tree from her song takes form here, carved into heavy black clay. Its roots grip downward, bearing the weight of her migration, the ache of memory, her unspoken grief, and displacement's slow bruise passed through generations. This dark, dense body holds what cannot be said. And the delicate porcelain inlay traces a different possibility, threading white lines through the black like veins of light. It represents hope for a better life, in the end, this is what is migration is about. Roots do not vanish, they deepen elsewhere, feeding new branches.

Shaped in clay that remembers, migration is cyclical, not linear: we carry our grandmothers' songs across borders, sing them to sisters oceans away, build them into homes with partners in new cities. The tree stands as witness, rooted in loss, crowned in quiet defiance. Home emerges not despite the journey, but through it. Alive in the people we hold, the stories we etch, the weight we transform.

Studio RAVA, Amsterdam, 2026