A Cowboy In the City/Un Cowboy Dans La Ville/Sehirde Bir Kovboy

This book, published in Turkish, English, and French, emerged from a desire to showcase the works of Selami Gundogdu, a refuse collector and Art Brut creator, to a wider audience.

Selami Gundogdu was born in 1966 in the village of Guvender, Kocaeli, Turkey. He spent his youth in the fields and mountains of his village, both shepherding and farming.

During his primary school years, his classmates introduced him to comic books, which he would thereafter always carry with him while shepherding. These comics inspired him to start drawing. Over time, he has created a diverse array of faces, figures, and stories on various materials.

Selami’s art primarily reflects the village life he experienced and the tales he heard from the village elders. Beyond his two-dimensional works on different surfaces, he employs unusual materials and techniques, such as embossing with stones or using sunlight reflected by a magnifying glass to burn patterns into tree barks and broken branches. His art is guided solely by his personal experiences and the comics he cherished.

In 2008, Selami moved from Guvender village to the city center of Izmit, where he began working as a refuse collector for the municipal sanitation department. He continues to create art on a diverse range of materials, including the tools and clothing associated with his work.

The recent interaction between Selami Gundogdu and a fine arts student in the neighbourhood where he has been working for the past 12 years inspired the creation of this booklet.