Sada-Hissiyatın Mahiyeti — Essential Sentiment (2021)

For the POLYPHONIZE, Serap Kanay prepared a sensual parable, a personal story that sounds too universal. In a sound piece she utters a phrase addressed to a loved one living on the other side of the border in three languages used on the divided island.

‘Sada* from the Arabic word “Sadaa” meaning a Sound, a Call an Echo. Hissiyat also stemming from Arabic meaning Emotions, Feeling. Mahiyet again has the same root and means Essence, Nature, Quality. Several previous generations have been thought to believe that there is such a thing as “True Love” and / or the “right person” and it will happen to us too. Although in the modern world the concept of love has been downgraded, as an artist I have always believed there must be someone out there fitting for each of us. With this belief I had many trials and tribulations, which were not the “real thing” until the day someone sent me a song in response to a flying fish photo I have sent in excitement.

Staying at a friends house parallel to the border Green Line in Nicosia I had the realization that although we were apart, we were literally sleeping under the same sky. Upon sending a good night message stating this I received Nat King Cole singing “In the Cool of the Day” by Manos Hadjidakis but couldn’t listen to it. When I returned home the next day and listened to the song few times over and over again, I knew then that this was the person I always felt must exist somewhere that I will have the chance to meet one day. So, I wrote the sentence in Sada, at the time with no name at first. I just wanted to get it right, so investigated and wrote it several times in all three languages. The happiness was not only for finding the person but in knowing that what I believed had come true. I wrote it and kept it to myself until one morning during a conversation he wrote about “hearing my footsteps somewhere in the universe”.

There has always been obstacles, beyond the borders of my divided country therefore we are physically separated despite our deeply felt unique connection. As the years past which sealed this separation, I decided to make those sentences into a work. First, I went to get a Greek pronunciation lesson after having my sentence checked once again. I read, recorded, listened to and said it so many times both with a teacher then at home until I sounded like I was speaking it. Then I went into a professional recording studio and recorded it three times until I was satisfied with the sounds, in all three languages.

The image of the sound waves** in all three languages are almost identical in the repetition. This enhances and embodies “The Essentiality of Sentiment” before you. Remembering the sound of the footsteps and marrying them with the reality of the emotions, I named it “Sada – Hissiyatin Mahiyeti”. The nature of the feeling is contained in the sound, which is also a call that echoes in three languages.’ (Serap K.)