What We Carry, What We Let Go
Some weeks feel heavier than others—and this one carried a quiet intensity I didn’t expect. I went to see Dak’s new show at x-ist, curious about the bright colors I’d glimpsed online. But what I found was something raw and unsettling beneath the surface: a visual confrontation with how men carry pain. It stayed with me longer than I expected. So the next morning, I walked through Kuzguncuk to clear my mind. It’s a place I return to again and again when I need to breathe. Somehow, the softness of early spring blossoms and the sound of dishes clinking through open windows helped me find balance again.
Eli Cebinde Gezen Erkekler at x-ist
March 6 – April 5, 2025
Burak Dak’s second solo exhibition at x-ist, Eli Cebinde Gezen Erkekler (Men Who Walk Around with Their Hands in Their Pockets), offers a bold visual reckoning with the constructs of masculinity and the shadows of toxic male identity. The phrase that lends the show its title becomes a razor-sharp metaphor—at once satirical and damning—aimed at the cultural myth of effortless male dominance.
Dak’s pastel-heavy works are emotionally turbulent and saturated with symbolism. At first glance, they seduce with their theatricality and bright, acid-colored layers—but on closer inspection, the men depicted are wounded, absurd, distorted, or grotesquely masked. The visual language is playful in form but weighted in meaning. In pieces like Fare Adam (Mouse Man) or İğne Tutan Adam (The Man Holding a Needle), animal traits or exaggerated props become masks of power, distraction, or defense—tools of a masculinity built not on strength but on suppression.
This is not simply an aesthetic exploration. Dak uses these images to critique the cultural machinery that enables emotional detachment, manipulation, and violence in the name of “being a man.” The works suggest that beneath the casual swagger of these archetypes lies something deeply broken—and that the price of maintaining these personas is paid not just by others, but by the men themselves.
The artist advocates, visually and conceptually, for a new kind of male freedom—one rooted in vulnerability, emotional literacy, and empathy. He challenges viewers, especially men, to confront what is hidden behind the masks and to consider what it might cost to remove them.
Address:
Gümüşsuyu Mah., Süren Apartmanı, Mete Cd. No:8 Kat:1, Beyoğlu, Istanbul.
Strolling in Kuzguncuk
I spent a morning wandering the streets of Kuzguncuk, where spring blossoms were beginning to open. This neighborhood never fails to calm me. Its narrow lanes and colorful wooden houses feel like a village folded into the city. I walked through the cemetery at the top of the hill, then down toward the Bosphorus. Quiet birdsong, a breeze through the trees, and the faint clatter of breakfast plates from open windows.
Address: Kuzguncuk, Üsküdar
I’m still thinking about Dak’s masked figures—how they hid and exposed so much at once. And I’m also thinking about the old houses in Kuzguncuk, and how their crooked windows and leaning frames don’t try to hide anything. Maybe that contrast is the point. This week reminded me that beauty and discomfort can coexist. Some truths are easier to face when softened by light, air, and space to walk.
Why Turkiye? 
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