The Seven Sleepers: A 300-Year Dream and the Faithful Guardian

About the Artwork

This canvas is not a dark and silent depiction of a cave; it is an abstract map of faith's resistance against time. The artist takes the parable of the Seven Sleepers and reconstructs the fundamental concepts comprising it: faith, oppression, loyalty, time, and divine protection, by separating them into forms. The countless figures sleeping in the texture of the earth in the background represent those seven youths and their deep sleep lasting over three hundred years. They are part of a dream detached from the flow of time, under divine protection, purified from the noise of the world. The vertical color columns dividing the canvas are that divine curtain closing the cave entrance. Each column symbolizes a different era, a different season, a different century flowing outside. While empires fall and new ones are established, faith continues its sleep in a pure and unchanging way behind these colorful curtains of time. The golden triangle in the top left corner is Qitmir, their dog, the immortal symbol of loyalty and innocence. Because his loyalty is the purest, most untouchable essence of the legend. The gold color exalts his unworldly, sacred devotion. The fire-red triangle at the bottom right is the world the youths fled from: The oppression of Emperor Decius, the burning threat of paganism, and the 'passion' brought by risking death for their beliefs. This red area represents the danger outside the cave and the ruthless reality they escaped. And the large red sphere hanging over all this is time itself. It is the sun rising and setting for 300 years. This work shows us how faith is immortalized by being protected with loyalty even from the greatest oppression, passing under time and a divine witness.