Hayal Pozanti

Hayal Pozanti (b. 1983, Istanbul, Turkey) is an artist who lives and works in Manchester, Vermont. Coaxing oil stick and oil pastel onto canvas and paper with a sculptural approach, Pozanti creates swirling organic forms that rise and fall in waves of deep, jewel-toned hues. The artist’s compositions originate from a discrete set of thirty-one shapes she developed to operate like the icons of a personal lexicon, in order to create abstract calligraphic arrangements. Over the past decade, these glyphs have evolved and softened into new forms that suggest imaginary landscapes. Pozanti’s organic compositions are filled with mysterious biological life forms in amoeba-like shapes that are informed by the surrealist sculptures of Jean Arp, who similarly aspired to create abstract worlds that held universal truths about reality. Pozanti describes the act of painting as both a means of world-making and a way of being present in the world as it is. 

In 2021, the artist created Instant Paradise, an eighty-five-foot-long permanent art installation on the ceiling of the New York Public Library's largest circulating branch. Consisting of colorful, sculptural iterations of the thirty-one forms from the language she developed, the installation is on permanent view at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library. Representing the American Pavilion at Gwangju Biennale in 2024, Pozanti showcased a series of sculptures responding to what it means to present Asian art in the US at this moment in history.