Ayşe Öztürk has redefined the traditional boundaries of Anatolian textile art by introducing an entirely new genre: loomed bead rugs. Drawing inspiration from centuries of rug-weaving traditions native to the Anatolian peninsula, she adapts ancient motifs and techniques to a meticulous process that replaces threads with glass beads. The result is a body of work that blends the permanence and shimmer of beadwork with the cultural depth and storytelling of Anatolian carpets. Öztürk’s rugs do not merely reflect an interest in aesthetic innovation—they are a preservation of cultural heritage reimagined through a radical contemporary lens.
Based in Istanbul but originally from the Cappadocia region, Öztürk was surrounded from a young age by the visual language of kilims and handwoven carpets. The geometric patterns, tribal symbols, and vegetal motifs that appeared in her grandmother’s home would later serve as the foundation for her beadwork vocabulary. Rather than replicating these forms exactly, she transforms them through a structural approach informed by her training in sculpture and design. Her earliest experiments with bead looming began as flat panels, but she quickly saw the potential for expanding them into floor and wall-based pieces that honored the scale and function of traditional rugs.
At the core of Öztürk’s technique is the use of a custom-made horizontal loom adapted specifically to bear the weight and dimensional needs of glass beads. Each rug requires the planning and precision of both a textile artist and a jeweler. Working with seed beads sourced primarily from the Czech Republic and Japan—countries renowned for their consistency in size and vibrancy of color—she arranges each bead as a substitute for a knot or thread. Unlike traditional loom weaving, in which warp and weft are in constant interaction, Öztürk’s method fixes the beads into place using specialized nylon filament and pressure-mounted tension, allowing the resulting surfaces to remain both supple and structurally sound.
The making of a single rug can take months, sometimes even over a year depending on size and complexity. Some rugs consist of hundreds of thousands of beads, with each one individually chosen and placed in accordance with a digitally plotted pattern. Öztürk employs traditional Anatolian rug symbology—such as the elibelinde (hands-on-hips) fertility motif, ram’s horn symbols for masculinity and strength, or the evil eye protection design—but she reimagines their scale and chromatic value. In her bead rugs, a fertility motif might be rendered in opalescent silver and midnight blue rather than the conventional earthy reds and ochres of wool yarn. This chromatic shift creates an almost mosaic-like illusion, where light plays across the surface like water flowing across stone.
While her use of historical motifs roots her work in Anatolian identity, her color choices and materiality push her pieces into the realm of contemporary design. Some of her rugs are monochromatic studies in black, bronze, or pearl-white, evoking the minimalist rigor of modernist aesthetics while still retaining the storytelling embedded in every pattern. Others erupt with psychedelic intensity, combining traditional structures with near-iridescent palettes of turquoise, coral, gold, and lime green. These rugs oscillate between ancient and futuristic, their luminous surfaces engaging viewers on a sensory and emotional level far beyond conventional textile design.
Öztürk’s loomed bead rugs are more than static artifacts; they are dynamic surfaces that respond to context. In well-lit gallery environments, they function as sculptures, catching and reflecting ambient light. In dimmer settings, they take on a subtle glow, reminiscent of religious relics or Byzantine mosaics. The visual tension between texture and flatness, between textile softness and bead rigidity, compels viewers to approach them slowly, to examine them not only as decorative surfaces but as repositories of memory and ritual.
Her rugs have been featured in both traditional craft exhibitions and cutting-edge contemporary art shows, occupying an ambiguous but powerful space between functional object and conceptual work. In 2022, her solo exhibition in Ankara, titled “Tapestry of Light,” featured an installation of seven rugs arranged on the floor in a darkened gallery, lit from above by spotlights that made them appear like celestial maps. Each rug in the installation represented a different Anatolian province, interpreted not just through pattern, but through bead texture, density, and gradient shifts that evoked the topographical variations of the land itself.
Öztürk also views her work as an act of resistance and reclamation. In interviews, she speaks about how many aspects of Anatolian women’s history—particularly their artistry, symbolism, and contributions to textile culture—have been overlooked or erased. By using beads, traditionally seen in many cultures as frivolous or decorative, she asserts the complexity and permanence of this feminine-coded labor. Each rug becomes a manifesto written in glass, a statement of continuity and transformation.
Though her rugs are primarily exhibited in galleries and museums, Öztürk has begun a limited series of functional bead rug commissions for collectors who are willing to engage with them as both art and daily presence. These works are fitted with custom backings that preserve their structure while allowing for safe placement in low-traffic environments. For her, the act of placing a bead rug on the floor—walking across it, living with it—is not desecration but activation. It completes the dialogue between the object and the tradition it speaks from: one in which rugs are not to be hung in reverence alone, but to be lived with, stepped on, prayed over, and passed down.
Ayşe Öztürk’s loomed bead rugs are living bridges between Anatolia’s ancient past and its contemporary voices. Through tens of thousands of glimmering beads, she reinterprets the language of the loom with poetic clarity and technical brilliance. Her work is not only an homage to a cultural legacy but a vision of its future—intricate, luminous, enduring, and always in conversation with the hands that first wove pattern into place centuries ago.