SÜMER SAYIN
When the Sea Used to Be, 2026
Concrete, mirror

The work emerges from the recurring image of the sea from my childhood, not simply as a
landscape, but as a place in time, associated with freedom, movement, and belonging. Living in
Berlin, its absence has gradually transformed the sea into a remembered and imagined space.
The sculpture consists of a circular concrete surface, broken by an irregular opening. Beneath it, a
dark blue mirror suggests water and depth, while a pair of concrete feet disappears into it in the
gesture of diving. The opening becomes a self-made passage through the solidity of the present,
towards a place that can no longer be physically entered. Caught between movement and
immobility, fluidity and solidity, the work considers the desire to return to a remembered space
while remaining inevitably shaped by the present.

