Selinyena Ozel

Beauty for Ashes

Beauty for Ashes is an experimental animated piece about life, death, and transformation on a spiritual level. I used symbolic images like an apple, a skull, and divine light to reflect on the human condition and to question whether existence is only physical or something more than that. Beauty for Ashes is inspired by the biblical verse Isaiah 61:3, “…to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes,” which speaks about turning loss into something meaningful and hopeful.

“The piece draws from stories many people have heard before, like the creation of light and the fall of humanity through Eve and the forbidden apple. Instead of retelling these stories directly, I approached them more as ideas to reflect on. I started thinking about how we usually focus on physical life and death, but not as much on the possibility of a spiritual side what it means to live, or even “die,” beyond just the physical world.Even though I began with a storyboard, the process became very intuitive. A lot of the scenes were not fully planned. I let the animation evolve as I worked, following instinct and emotion. Because of that, the piece feels more like a flow of thoughts and images rather than a structured narrative.Visually, I focused on making each scene feel like its own illustration. I spent time on painterly details, especially in the backgrounds, and used color and texture to shape the mood of each moment. The shifts in color help guide the viewer through different emotional states, from creation and life to decay and transformation.For me, this work is also personal. It reflects my belief that life and death are not only physical experiences, but that there is something deeper beyond what we can see. Even though the animation touches on themes of mortality, it also carries a sense of hope that death may not be the end, but part of something more. At the same time, I want to leave space for viewers to interpret it in their own way and reflect on what it means to them.”