maran got featured on magazine: the raising of kurds

Helin Yurtseven is a multidisciplinary product designer maker and artist based in London, with a growing practice rooted in material exploration, storytelling, and symbolic form. Their work moves between design, craft, and visual art, often drawing inspiration from nature, mythology, memory, depth psychology, and cultural narratives. Through both functional and speculative objects, they explore how design can carry emotional, spiritual, and collective meaning beyond functionality.

Maran is a contemporary seating project that reinterprets the traditional Şark Köşesi through textile, form, and cultural symbolism. Rooted in Kurdish visual culture, symbolism surrounding fertility, protection, rebirth, and the sacred relationship between humans and nature and collective memory, the project explores how traditional forms can be translated into contemporary living while preserving their emotional and symbolic presence. Blending contemporary product design with symbolic storytelling, the piece investigates how objects can become vessels of cultural memory.

The research draws on the myth of Şahmaran, a figure deeply embedded within Kurdish mythology. As a deity that is both woman and serpent, Şahmaran represents duality, transformation, wisdom, and the union of opposites. The project translates these symbolic meanings into material and form through fluid structures, tactile surfaces, and patterned textiles.

Motifs such as the serpent, ram horn, tree of life and paisley are reinterpreted throughout the object, forming a visual language connected to balance, continuity, protection, and connection to the divine. The cylindrical backrest reflects the flowing movement of the serpent, while the textile surfaces carry layered symbolic references inspired by traditional motifs and weaving cultures.

Produced through tufting, woodworking, and hand-sewn textile processes, Maran exists between furniture, art, and collectible design. The project aims to create not only a seating object, but also a space connected to ritual, gathering, a renewed relationship with cultural roots and remembrance.