Raised by My Own Hands II, 2024

With this uncanny portrait, Ali Demirci depicts the corrupting nature of power and how people turn into the authority they feed and raise with their own hands. The contrast between the vulnerability of pink skin and the grotesqueness of the pig form symbolises lost innocence. The hybrid creature held tenderly in the arms, yet in truth held captive, is a metaphor for the disasters “we have raised with our own hands”. This 60 × 50 cm canvas is a space of confrontation that combines political satire with existential fear and traps the viewer in the grey zone where the line between “human” and “animal” disappears.