14-year-old Manuela, after her mother's death, is sent to an aristocratic boarding school that only accepts female students. The school is governed by a headmistress obsessed with discipline and order. In this harsh environment, Manuela becomes increasingly withdrawn; she cannot actively participate in classes, receives poor grades, and isolates herself from the other students. The only person she can connect with is the young teacher Elizabeth von Bernburg, who approaches the students with love and understanding. Manuela's interest in Miss von Bernburg gradually turns into an impossible love, causing chaos in the school. 

Set in an atmosphere where the footsteps of the Nazi regime are heard, this radical film, which features only women in the roles of screenwriter, director, and cast, is considered one of the first examples of explicit queer storytelling in cinema. In the Criterion Collection edition of 2021, author Amanda Lee Koe described it as follows: "This film belongs to women who are trying to find themselves—and each other—in spite of repressive structures."

More information can be found here.

The film centers on the true story of a family mourning the disappearance of two sisters in Tunisia in 2015. Olfa Hamrouni's two daughters, aged 15 and 16, have disappeared one day, leaving her and her two younger daughters desperate. The director conveys the trauma through performance, using professional actors to portray Olfa and her daughters. Although Four Daughters was nominated for the “Best Documentary” award at the Oscars, what we see on screen is in fact a staged fiction that prompts us to question the reality we see on the screen.

More information can be found here.

EKAV / Education, Culture and Research Foundation is happy to host the fifth solo show of Aşkım Akyıldız at Ekavart Gallery from April 25th – May 25th 2024, titled after her book of poems “Silent Reproach of Mine (Sitemim Lal)”, where paintings become poems, and poetry becomes painting.

The artist leaves her artwork out in the nature and exposes them to the elements. The figures in these works sometimes drift under rainfall or get carried away by a storm only to find shelter in the bosoms of cats and dogs. Paintings get caught by an old garden gate, sleep at night with hydrangeas, get stuck on the wall of a church or a bell tower; tiny figures are left behind and forgotten between lace pillows; and shiny little bugs, and ants wander on other paintings in the grooves of olive trees and on their branches…

Akyıldız, who produces her art in villages by the sea and next to forests where she spends most of her life often uses, besides paint, needle and thread, and fabric in her work. Use of fine calligraphy nibs in drawing, and the charming lightness of watercolors evoke figures and portraits floating in space, while the poetics of ink lend to elements of painting in such work.

Aşkım Akyıldız dedicates this exhibition of her new work to all whose reproach is silent;
To children whose reproach is silent,
To animals whose reproach is silent,
And to women whose cheeks blush with silent reproach…

More information can be found here.

Akbank Short Film Festival was held for the first time in 2004. It has developed further over the years into one of the leading arts and culture events in Istanbul with an increasingly diverse programme. The festival aims to encourage short film production, to deliver the films to audiences, to support new filmmakers, to champion short film internationally, to provide a debate platform for short film within a festival culture and to establish a festival for cinema-lovers to enjoy.

 In addition to the national and international short film competitions, the festival includes various workshops, interviews and master classes and thus acts as an experience-sharing platform between cinema professionals and festivalgoers. Akbank Short Festival, which takes place in Akbank Sanat every year for ten days, is free of charge for all the events. The festival is composed of “Festival Shorts,” “World Shorts,” “Short to Feature,” “Experiences,” “Documentary Film,” “Perspective,” “Special Screening” and “Forum” sections. Films that have competed at world’s leading film festivals such as Cannes, Berlin, Venice are presented to audiences every year. The “Forum” section, which was opened for the first time in 2017, aims to support short films from the scriptwriting stage, organizes trainings for project development and a short film screenplay contest for production support.

More information can be found here.

Zilberman is pleased to announce Zeynep Kayan’s solo exhibition titled second time with the chair, opening at the gallery’s main space located at the Mısır Apartmanı in Beyoğlu between March 7 - May 11, 2024. second time with the chair brings together Zeynep Kayan’s latest works, initiating a dialogue between the self and repetition, conceived during her residency at Rijksakademie.

second time with the chair delves into the artist's repetitive journey, revisiting, reliving, and reattempting past experiences in a transcendent manner. It serves both as an introspective and an autoportrait, exploring themes of self, body, and the human condition through the lens of repetition. Kayan's exploration of space, repetition, and movement breaks through conventional artistic mediums, offering viewers a glimpse into the poetic dimensions of existence and the ever-shifting interplay between reality and perception.

Throughout the exhibition, Kayan explores repetition not only as a means to establish rhythm and tempo through movement, gesture, sound, and language but also as a mechanism for differentiation. In her video work second time with the chair,  the artist herself is depicted almost sitting on the floor, slowly pulling a string tied to an unseen chair, drawing it closer to her. This depiction of the artist in relation to the chair is a recurring motif in Kayan's oeuvre, seen in the videos titled 00'43" (2022) and 00'38" (2022). These videos were filmed before her relocation to Amsterdam and were intended to create a memory with a chair inherited from her grandmother, which Kayan had never previously utilized. With each repetition, the work undergoes transformation, evolving into something novel. This motif, initially examined as both a movement and an object, finds further depth at Rijksakademie in the performance titled i started on the second week and i'm still pulling the chair (2023) where Kayan once again pulls a string attached to a chair. This recurring motif, repeatedly explored and fragmented, delves into the rhythmic shifts inherent in continuous movement.

For Kayan, repetition serves as a catalyst for change, challenging perceptions and rendering the familiar unfamiliar. The video and the site-specific installations featuring strings suspended from the ceiling pay homage to Kayan's previous solo exhibition in Berlin one one two one two three. This string installation traverses the space, establishing a more direct relationship with the spectator and inviting them into Kayan's personal sphere. What was once a mere apparatus in the videos now emerges as an entity in its own right, disrupting established roles anew. Furthermore, the exhibition is accompanied by a poem written by the artist, which serves as a guiding narrative, weaving through the works that wander around the chair. 

While Kayan often incorporates her own body into her practice, the series, second time with the chair: blue portraits stands out by breaking one of the constants in her practice, the limited palette of black, white, and grey. Here, she presents herself in a blue dress, creating an autoportrait that occupies a central position within the exhibition space. This shift in color palette enhances the viewer's engagement, as the portraits direct the spectator's gaze and movement across the gallery space.

second time with the chair is an anagram, where the artist navigates through her artistic practice, disrupting constants while persistently engaging in repetition. In her words, she is interested in the desire to repeat and repeat to desire, in exhaustion, in how things alter daily and separate gradually, in the dance that goes nowhere, in concentration and uninterrupted contradiction.

For more information read here.

As a queer, anti-fascist performance artist from Turkey, Kunak’s works reflect on the auto-censorship which accompanies them and their artmaking. Growing up amid political suppression and now living in Berlin, their works deal with the performative signifiers of contemporary lifestyles. Kunak studies the way that the patriarchy injects banality as an everyday phenomenon. Normative patriarchal structures are broken down and given a makeover to inspire new realities that expose the problems of the old, for example by experimenting with kuir camouflage. One of Kunak’s key influences is Arabesk culture, urban development in Turkey, the resultant suppression of minorities and the residual self-censorship it imparts on the suppressed. Arabesk is a genre of music that emerged in Turkey towards the end of the 1960s and became popular among rural migrants. Mixing Turkish classical (Türk Sanat Müziği) and folk with Egyptian and Western elements it came to symbolise the entire migrant culture that inspired it. Arabesk outlines the relationship between Turkish modernity and Westernisation and its many contradictions and absurdities. Kunak’s works form a response to the capitalist modernisation process and its tension with Orientalism and Self-Orientalisation – the perception of ‘Eastern’ and how they see themselves through this construction. Kunak is helping define Turkish Eastern-futurism by combining speculation and science-fiction, history and fantasy into new methodologies for artmaking.

More information can be found here.

In this showcase the young Turkish-American artist draws inspiration from her multicultural understanding, exploring concepts such as identity, the body, and material experimentation. Her works delve into provocation, gender, cultural codes, entrenched linguistic patterns, and the 'moments' embedded in her everyday life. Buse relies on common sense and shared knowledge, often defying convention. Manipulating the form and function of everyday objects to challenge behavioral and social codes. Her sculptures and installations confront taboos, power dynamics, provocation, language, the male and female body, considering social norms and identity. Over the years, Buse's practice has empowered her to materialize her personal and everyday archive, utilizing various media and techniques, including ceramics, casting, photography, video, wood, metal, and ready-made objects.

More information can be found here.

Noise Media Art aspires to serve as a platform fostering artistic production. It aims to discover emerging artists, showcase unseen works, engage in discussions on new and unconventional ideas, and boasts a robust and inclusive educational program.

More information can be found here.

“See Another” reveals Yeter’s observations and encounters in Istanbul’s local markets during the year 2000, which are accompanied by innovative sound installations throughout the exhibition space. Yeter has meticulously captured each market stall as an art installation with the precision of an artist who has mastered her craft. By framing these scenes through the lens of her camera, Yeter invites the audience to embark on a nostalgic journey through time, providing a unique perspective on a local market that thrived at the cusp of the millennium. 

Tracing the weariness of evenings and the soulful charm that lies within weathered market stalls, this exhibition is a testament to the artist’s attentive societal observations during her visits to Istanbul. Through a realistic and aesthetic photographic eye, “See Another” weaves a rich tapestry that captures the essence of the artist’s encounters. This panorama is intricately designed to portray the daily challenges faced by market vendors, showcasing a mosaic of human stories that encapsulate diverse cultures, characters, impossibilities, and desires. The exhibition unfolds as a captivating narrative, providing viewers with a profound and striking glimpse into the manifold tapestry of these shared experiences.

More information can be found here.

In the Realm of Three Inland Seas is the most comprehensive exhibition of Handan Börüteçene, whose practice has firmly focused on archaeology, history, and nature for over forty years. The title points to a geography that has inspired the artist with its land and seas as well as cultural heritage and myths: Anatolia and Thrace. The selection presented at Salt Beyoğlu highlights various works, including Börüteçene’s early pieces making up her graduation project, her award-winning installation Kır/Gör [Break/See] (1985), the terracotta series displayed in the Urart Art Gallery in 1987, and her large-scale public sculptures. Tracing an artistic practice that challenges amnesia, the exhibition opens up the artist’s desires, issues that she has persistently tackled, recurring motifs, and new directions in her works.

Early on, Börüteçene was inspired by the expansive history and multilayered visuality of Istanbul, the city she was born and raised in. During the artist’s childhood years, when her interest in and excitement around the past became clear, the archaeology books she browsed in her father’s library and the family visits to the Istanbul Archaeology Museums greatly influenced her imagination. Her mother, Mrs. Hesna, was a master embroiderer; the multicolored crystal beads, spangles, and pearls scattered around while she was working reinforced the artist’s relationship with color and form.

While studying ceramics at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Istanbul, Börüteçene joined archaeological fieldwork with the motivation of moving beyond the “four walls” and learning from the earth’s past. Her first excavation at Arykanda Ancient City coincided with her senior year at the Academy. Upon graduating in 1981, the artist moved to Paris and worked in the sculpture studio of Georges Jeanclos and César (Baldaccini) at l’École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts (1982-1984). Her first solo exhibition opened in Paris, while she took part in other significant exhibitions in Istanbul.

The artist has pursued a nomadic life between Istanbul, Paris, and Kaş. These translocations, in time, distanced Börüteçene from her works physically, if not conceptually. A group of works that were acquired into collections or that she gifted to friends have disappeared, deteriorated, or faded away due to various reasons. Her public sculptures in Istanbul have moved away from their original purpose due to functional changes in those places or are left to wear. Emphasizing these unrecorded, out-of-sight, and lost works, In the Realm of Three Inland Seas also addresses the negligence towards cultural heritage and artworks in Turkey.

More information on the event can be found here.

Zilberman announces Sena Başöz’s solo exhibition titled Inevitable Choreography. Inevitable Choreography brings together works spanning from Sena Başöz's earlier years and her more recent works, establishing a compelling dialogue between objects that have traversed her life.

Inevitable Choreography focuses on cycles and movement of objects from Sena Başöz’s personal archive which brings into mind the movement of the body around these objects across space and time. The artist delves into the relationship between the body, object and time by exploring the movement and the transient perception of the object.

Başöz predominantly works on seeking ways of interacting with what is considered out of reach and experimentally regenerating what is considered lost. In her practice, the artist delves into the body as an archive and movement as a tool to regenerate. She begins questioning movement as a tool for regeneration starting with her performance piece Slalom (2022), which investigates how a moving body can activate an institutional archive. Since then, the artist realized that, just like the body, objects also move and this mutual movement could be perceived as a choreography on the concept of impermanence. 

An unexpected reunion with a portrait, discarded in the trash two decades ago, compelled Başöz to reflect on the journey of an object. G., After a Long Stroll (2023), explores the temporal journey of an object separate from the intention of its creator. Departing from personal stories, Başöz  explores the notion objét trouvé, that of between the found and the lost, between an active research and a passive alertness, where the experience of objet trouvé happens to be, in that same interstice of time and space where the coincidence resides. 

Discovering an object often entails its initial loss. Such is the narrative woven into the new work titled The Last Time I Saw the Anchor that Sunk into the Sea and The Anchor that Came out of the Sea After Two Months (2023)”. This artwork encapsulates the moments surrounding the detachment of an anchor from the boat that the artist was on. Consequently, the anchor, now retrieved, inadvertently lost but subsequently recovered, is presented alongside the drawing, offering a tangible connection to the past, a relic to cling to.

More information on the event can be found here.

Depo presents Alaca Heyheyler (“The Motley Jitters”) Collective’s exhibition The Women’s Atlas. The exhibition focuses on the collective’s second book, which invites us to look at the experience of womanhood from girlhood to adulthood, in social life, at work, in family life, in relationships and in one’s own body.

Alaca Heyheyler held workshops with women in Bursa and Istanbul for a year in preparation for their second book. With the impressions they gathered from these meetings, Alaca Heyheyler prepared a series of questions divided into seven sections under the titles ‘Our Girlhood’, ‘Adolescence’, ‘Sexuality’, ‘Integrity of Body, Mind and Spirit’, ‘Emotional Relationships and Bonds’, ‘Sisterhood’, ‘Girl Alone at Home, at Work and on the Street’ and collected answers to them online.

Alaca Heyheyler’s second exhibition, The Women’s Atlas, was inspired by the experiences that were shared with them by the women who answered these questions. The exhibition, which aims to bring together and make visible the experiences of women from various places, ages, and methods, will also hold a variety of workshops, talks, meetings, and screenings, transforming Depo’s ground floor into a living and producing studio.

Alaca Heyheyler is a fluid and independent group of artists consisting of Arzu Yayıntaş, Güneş Terkol and Sevil Tunaboylu, who have come together to think collectively and support each other’s journeys as women and artists, while also intermittently materialising their reflections into physical projects. In 2017, the group published their first book Alaca Heyheyler, consisting of interviews with 104 women of different ages and professions on their experiences of the cycles of womanhood, starting with their own birth stories, first periods, PMS, abortion, miscarriage, birth, motherhood and menopause.

More information on the event can be found here.

Megabytes Uploaded to the Cloud is an intensive summary of Çanakçı's artistic production, which dates back to the early 2000s, that wraps the contemporary with the past: The artist has blended things she has touched, heard, smelled, tasted and seen over the years composed in a variety of forms. The different techniques she has always applied on misprinted fabrics combine with mediums such as drawing, photography and sound installation to create Çanakçı's emotional geography and draw the viewer into an impressive narrative where fragments of both the present and the past are intertwined. The artist envisions this intricate narrative form with the words "(...) I see them as scattered fragments of space belonging to another world."

The exhibition takes its name from the sentence "(...) am I megabytes uploaded to the cloud?" from the Italian writer Domenico Starnone's novel "Ties". The term usually refers to transferring data over the internet to a cloud storage service, with the unit of measurement "Megabyte" describing various files such as images/audio/text. What is accumulated through perception is stored mentally on the one hand and digitally somewhere in space at the same time. In this context, the expression shows a kind of interconnectedness with Çanakçı's long-standing oeuvre of collecting, storing and finding. Instead of old albums, "clouds" form a form of remembering between the past and the present, expressed in codes.

The works in the exhibition form a loop between the concepts of mourning, memory and birth through their names and visuals. The New World Garden series, created by the articulation of twelve collage works of drawings and photographs, and Sorrow, an installation of embroidered antique kitchen linens, creates a unique visual world. It offers an activist narrative, both personal and impersonal, about seeing difference and irregularity. Acrylic and oil paintings on found fabrics present a recording of the subjective which reaches out to the viewer's memory. The combination of the organic and the inorganic invites the viewer to delve into ambiguous and yet familiar stories.

More information on the event can be found here.

Centred around the life and art of Melek Celâl, the exhibition highlights her groundbreaking achievements. Notably, she became the first female artist to show nude works at the Galatasaray Exhibition in 1924, and later, in 1935, the first woman to open a solo exhibition. Featuring a diverse array of the artist's paintings and sketches; as well as patterns inspired by Anatolian motifs; articles on urban planning, calligraphy, and Turkish embroideries, the exhibition also includes a rich archive, comprising photographs, postcards, memoirs, and letters that provide a comprehensive view of Melek’s life. 

 Offering a thorough exploration of the historical context, life, and works of Melek Celâl, a trailblazing female representative of the first generation of modern artists, born in the late nineteenth century in the Ottoman Empire and continuing their lives in the newly established Republic of Turkey, the exhibition sheds light on the nation’s experience of modernisation during a time of radical change. Melek Celâl’s upbringing in Istanbul, surrounded by the cultural heritage of a prosperous Ottoman family, unfolds against the backdrop of the city's dizzying urban metamorphosis and the broader cultural evolution of Turkey. 

More information can be found here.

THE PILL announces Elif Erkan’s second solo exhibition at the gallery. Titled IN BLOOM, the exhibition explores summer vacation and summer housing as a cultural invention specific to a certain period in the modernisation of Turkey, which holds together evolving concepts around work life balance, performance and social class as well as land use and housing development as colonizing activities.

Operating like an immersive installation, the exhibition is centered around a series of marble sculptures representing housing models in abstract, hollowed, uninhabited form to convey their detachment from ideas associated with “home”. In using marble, Erkan draws upon the material’s organic qualities and associations with both running water and kitchen and bathroom designs to turn domesticity inside out. The surrounding landscape paintings and puzzle pieces humourously expand on the threefold design quest modern summer housing projects must meet: the house must function as an object of speculation; it must be in proximity to beaches; it must have a view. The found landscape paintings these houses face are concealed behind rust and monochrome beige paint as a reference to the numbing repetition of the same, and temporal corrosion. Like obstructed windows, they turn the romantic idea of “looking inwards while looking out“ into a modernist abstraction achieved through the use of a facade technique used in construction, sgraffito, to scratch their surfaces. Fragmented images of domestic animals in idealized poses are at the heart of Erkan’s puzzle pieces where growth and decay are simultaneous as skin-like plasticine meets the puzzles and like a living organism, co-evolves with them, pointing to the seasonal adoption of pet animals, and their abandonment simultaneously. Large photographic prints from the artist’s own archive depicting abandoned summer houses, and garbage bins provide an immersive, documentarian backdrop to the installation.

In the modernist project, while summer vacation was a means to engineer lifestyles and manage the productivity of the middle class work force through calculated relaxation times and leisure activities, the coastal construction boom was engineering the landscape, turning coastal land into building plots. Erkan’s installation activates this collective memory in Turkey, with strong affective ties to past dreams of modernity anchored in the bygone era of 1980s and 1990s liberal development policies, and the ensuing collective disillusionment.

Grounded in a process-oriented approach to sculpture and installation, Elif Erkan’s artistic practice focuses on the affective and psychological associations of traditional sculptural materials combined with everyday objects of contemporary consumerism in narrative constellations that bridge ancient mythologies and pop culture. Drawing from her background in photography, Elif Erkan’s process involves simultaneously the material event and the material documentation of the event.

More information on the event can be found here.

The new exhibition of Ekin Su Koç titled “The Rebirth of Venus,” features a captivating collection of artworks that she commenced in Berlin and completed in Ayvalık. This exhibition delves into the complex themes of body perception, gender biases, and the essence of femininity.

Koç’s artistic practice is informed by consistently evolving dialogues about migration, displacement, gender dynamics, nature, and body perception. “Rebirth of Venus” connects personal and societal points of reference, welcoming visitors to experience a profound narrative.

The exhibition’s title refers to Botticelli’s famous painting “The Birth of Venus”, a masterpiece from the 15th-century when the Renaissance era was thriving in Florence and its adjacent regions.

The curatorial choices for the exhibition is reflected in a selection of pieces that celebrate those who identify beyond conventional gender norms and thrive in the unifying potency of art and aesthetics.

Ekin Su Koç reimagines and emancipates the female figures from the well-known works of art history with her modern and provocative style. Ekin Su Koç’s contemporary approach reinterprets these time-honoured works to protest against and alter the objectification of the female form. Noteworthy pieces such as ‘Three Beauties for Themselves,’ ‘Only Two Beauties,’ ‘Rebirth of Venus,’ ‘Recreation of Adam,’ ‘Child with a Pearl Necklace,’ and ‘River Flowers Where Ophelia Didn’t Drown,’ challenge conventional perspectives and aesthetic norms with a touch of humour.

“The Rebirth of Venus” encompasses a diverse array of Ekin Su Koç’s works, spanning various techniques and media including paint on canvas, collage on paper, and epoxy on canvas. These pieces magnify the inherent beauty and diversity of the human body, while defying binary gender stereotypes as well as limitations related to age and skin tone. Koç’s creations also delve into critical themes such as femininity, feminine creativity, and the dismantling of patriarchal structures.

More information on the event can be found here.

"We turn fantasy into reality and reality into fiction. Our creative process always starts with a story, and it is always a fantasy that we try to materialize in our photographs," say Nada Lottermann and Vanessa Fuentes. The Frankfurt-based photographers, who met at school and have been working together for a long time, reflect their outlook on life by taking fun, dynamic, natural and attractive photographs in the fields of fashion, style, lifestyle and everyday life. The figures of the duo, who are mostly known for their photographs using models, sometimes look at themselves, walk on the street, smoke, or party; sometimes they kiss, experience passion and love or rebel. One of the important features of their photographs is the interpretation of different styles and lifestyles with a casual, cool, fun, sexy and dynamic look. Today, as in all visual arts, photography has become a field that goes beyond just capturing the model, the outfit, the right composition and the light, and where storytelling and creating atmosphere come to the fore. Therefore, it is possible to say that Lottermann & Fuentes have created a playful, alluring universe of images in which they have integrated themselves by reflecting the spirit of their times, the visual language and lifestyle of their period. Entrepreneurial, creative, energetic, fast, with a high aesthetic taste, these young women are extremely successful actors who capture the spirit of the time and reflect the creative production style with their glittering lifestyles and exciting projects they realise in different parts of the world.

More information can be found here.

Galerist presents Merve İşeri’s first solo exhibition, titled ‘Merging Infinite’ on until December 16, 2023, curated by Canan Batur. The title of the exhibition etymologically signals coming together, melding into one another, and the ways in which it can create allyships. The exhibition explores the ambiguity of the separation between nature and human, as well as grounding, rooting, and the sense of belonging. She reminds us that we will return to the cosmic dust which we came from; invites us to mend the damaged ties and celebrate collective living.

The ties which are felt divinely and subtly, appear at once as the mother tongue and the co-authors of İşeri’s canvases. This synesthetic approach also finds its place in the exhibition as sound and video installations that emerge from the intuitive associations based on constellation maps.

The sound installation titled ‘Sound of the Constellations’, produced by Merve İşeri in collaboration with composer Heloise Tunstall-Behrens, presents a combined experience with the exhibition via creating a multi-sensory perception. The percussive timbres of the vocal notations intuitively interpret the star constellations while opening up space for a sense of direction. The video work titled 'Orbits' takes on the merging with water, the possibility of a perception beyond the human one; it questions the reflections of our movement and our existence as social beings through different perspectives.

Studying the cosmic ties from the sea to the earth, and then to the skies, İşeri presents a sincere and internal experience through the intuitive constellations derived from the star maps, and earthen balls scattered through the exhibition space.

‘Merging Infinite’, where alchemic combination symbolically and physically gives way to organic shapes, unusual fictional languages, and overlapping surreal forms and colours, İşeri invites the spectators to feel and internalise the acoustic, intuitive, and tactile perceptions with references from the skies and the earth.

More information on the event can be found here.

Pg Art Gallery hosts Cansu Sönmez’s solo exhibition, titled "Cynara" until November 18th, 2023

"I am an artist who breaths by escaping to the utopian world of my imagination from the depths of despairing waters. I share with the viewer the ethereal realms born within my mind. The canvas of worldly experiences illustrates the inherent juxtaposition of utopia and dystopia, two extremes poised to metamorphose into each other..." — C.S.

In the mesmerizing exhibition "Cynara," Sönmez ingeniously reconstructs the elusive connection with her childhood neighborhood, this time through the prism of the artichoke plant that grows in her local area. With a nod to the past, her vision takes the form of a bridge leading toward an aspired utopia. Within this utopian exhibition, the enigmatic artichoke plant, serendipitously discovered through the artist's curiosity for the locale, takes center stage. Drawing from this inspiration, a microcosmic realm opens, demonstrating how a world without humanity might have a harmony of its own with just plants.

The exhibition space, a tapestry that weaves together history and artistry, beckons the viewer into an immersive journey. The lower level unfolds the artist's utopian dreamscape, inviting you to traverse a narrative bridging the void between the past and the enigmatic future. Upstairs, the exhibition pays homage to Bayrampaşa and the artichoke, offering historical and artist's insights, which have collectively breathed life into this captivating endeavor.

More information on the event can be found here.