Although Baykam has a very “painterly” art past and although he is one of the pioneers of the new expressionist movement, he has been doing political art through his collages, his installations and even through his 4-D lenticular pieces, since the mid-eighties. 

In his series “I am Bleeding” (or “I am being torn apart”) Baykam is exposing the great tension that the country is going through as well as the heavy threats that the Republic is facing. From Atatürk to assasinated famous researcher/writer Uğur Mumcu, from the famous CHP deputy of the 50’s and 60’s Dr. Suphi Baykam to revolutionary student leader Deniz Gezmiş sentenced to death in 1972, from world known organ transplant doctor Prof. Mehmet Haberal to the legendary editorialist of the Cumhuriyet newspaper İlhan Selçuk, from İsmet İnönü, the second President to Doğu Perinçek, the enjailed leader of the Worker’s Party, from Cumhuriyet chief-writer Mustafa Balbay to the writer politician Tuncay Özkan all those iconographic well known figures are getting intermingled with abstract and conceptual art. 

The broken mirrors glued to the surface of the works have cutting edges on both sides and are “dangerous” material. But on the other hand, the viewers see their own reflections on these surfaces so that they canget  identified with the problems involved.

The tension and depression that is lived through, was not just the problem of those that are “guarding the Republic” in the prison cells in Silivri but the problem of every citizen living in this country.

Dramatically it turned out that these raids on Kemalist journalists, politicians and writers were a fabricated plot by the same religious sect members that tried the failed coup of July 15, 2016. Those Judges and prosecutors were taken to jail themselves!