This work is being developed for a group exhibition on self-portraiture marking the25th anniversary of Galerist, Istanbul.A self-portrait can never capture a person in their entirety. It always presents only afragment of reality: a face, a gesture, or an inner structure that becomes visible at aparticular moment. Here, the self-portrait turns away from the body’s outwardappearance and toward one of its internal mechanisms of protection.The immune cell at the centre of the work is part of an intricate system that movescontinuously through the body, sensing its surroundings, making contact,distinguishing threats, and responding to them. Among human cells, it is one of thosethat most closely resembles an autonomous organism, even a small animal. With itstextured surface, projections, and capacity for movement, it appears as amicroscopic creature travelling through the body, perceiving and acting. In this sense,the work is also an attempt to communicate with the animal within us and with theintuitive intelligence of the body that operates beyond conscious thought.The drawing also refers to the ancient culture of the nazar boncuğu in Türkiye: theglass eyes hung on bodies, homes, and objects to protect them from the evil eye.The work draws a bridge between this external protective eye and the immune cellworking invisibly within the body. One is suspended outside the body as a talismanagainst harmful gazes; the other moves inside us, ceaselessly engaged in the workof protection.The work honours this extraordinary and intricate mechanism within us. It proposesthat protection does not consist only of hardness or aggression, but also of attention,contact, discernment, and the capacity to remain in active relation with a living environment.