Author: whyturkiye

Glazed Light and Hidden Depths

May is nearly over, and Istanbul is blooming into its brightest self. This week I slowed down, even while the city moved quickly around me. I made art, I saw art, and escaped to the water for an hour that felt like a whole day.

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 “You Are Not One Of Us So You Are One Of Us” – Memed Erdener at Zilberman Dialogues

May 27 – July 26, 2025

At Zilberman Dialogues, Memed Erdener’s You Are Not One Of Us So You Are One Of Us creates a stark, conceptual space—one that unfolds somewhere between a baby’s first, wordless breath and the silence at the end of history. Drawing on the writings of Alexandre Kojève, the exhibition builds a philosophical framework that questions what it means to belong, to speak, to be recognized—and ultimately, to be human.

The works themselves mirror this tension between beginning and end. Flat silhouettes dominate the gallery—mostly human, sometimes ambiguous. The repetition of head-and-shoulder outlines in muted pastel backdrops evokes sameness, a sea of subjects whose identities have been flattened. There’s no distinct personality, no individual drama—just forms stripped of difference, arranged with a cold precision that mirrors the post-historical world Erdener is evoking.

A palette of soft lilacs, dusty browns, washed-out greens: it all feels drained, as if emotion has receded and only the structures remain. The clean geometry of the compositions, paired with the absence of facial detail or bodily movement, reinforces the show’s central claim: that in the collapse of difference, we lose more than variety—we lose meaning itself.

And yet, there’s discomfort in this quiet. The uniformity unsettles. The stylized figures, multiplied and pared down, feel like both protest and eulogy—visual echoes of a collective voice that once demanded to be heard and now stands silent in its sameness.

Erdener doesn’t offer catharsis or resolution. He presents a post-historical human—neither in conflict nor in communion, stripped of transformation, emptied of desire. In this exhibition, to “belong” becomes indistinguishable from being absorbed, erased.

It’s a cold vision. And it’s unforgettable.

Zilberman Dialogues is located at Meşrutiyet Caddesi No:90, Floor 3, Beyoğlu, Istanbul.

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 Morning Swim at Moda Sea Pool (Havuz)

A local friend told me this spot opens in late May, so I went early and found only a handful of people. The seawater pool floats just off the rocks near Moda Sahil and is managed by the city. The view is wide, the water chilly but clean. I swam a few slow laps, then sat in the sun reading a worn paperback. No phones. Just salt and sky.

Address: Moda Sahil Parkı, Kadıköy

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This week was about softened edges—cool colors, slow movement, and listening carefully. Istanbul always surprises me with how many ways there are to feel something real.

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Movement, Memory, and Magic Hour

Istanbul in mid-May is golden. The light stays longer, the ferry decks get a little more crowded, and the city starts to stretch into its summer self. This week took me into neighborhoods I will never see, into a garden that smelled like orange blossoms, and onto a rooftop where strangers turned into dinner companions.

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“State of Occupation,” Gülsün Karamustafa at BüroSarıgedik & Merdiven Art Space

May 5 – July 1, 2025

This exhibition didn’t whisper Istanbul’s story — it pressed it into your skin. Spread across BüroSarıgedik and the steep stairwells of Merdiven Art Space, A State of Occupation by Gülsün Karamustafa brought a quiet, enduring pressure, like the memory of a city that refuses to be forgotten even as it’s being transformed.

Karamustafa has long mapped the politics of place and memory, but this show felt particularly intimate — not just because of the scale of the works, but because of how directly they engaged the shifting psychology of Istanbul itself. Through collages, video, assemblage, and found objects, she gave form to a city haunted by its own constant reinvention. You could feel the weight of vanished neighborhoods and redrawn borders in every careful construction.

I moved slowly through each room, especially drawn to the pieces where domestic textures — lace, textiles, tools — were stitched into strange new geographies. These weren’t nostalgic gestures. They carried grief, and clarity. Her video work pulsed with unease, especially where it touched on the mechanisms of erasure — how buildings are scrubbed of their stories, how the aesthetic of a street can overwrite the truth of who once lived there.

There’s something potent about seeing this work in Istanbul, knowing that the city is both her subject and her material. Karamustafa doesn’t offer solutions. Instead, she reveals the contours of loss — the city’s lost voices, lost rhythms, lost freedoms — and in doing so, insists that none of it disappears without a trace.

Address: BüroSarıgedik – Merdiven Art Space, Halil Paşa Ykş. No:3, Galata, Istanbul

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 Nezahat Gökyiğit Botanical Garden

One afternoon I finally made the trip out to this vast garden near Ataşehir. It’s more like a park-meets-laboratory than a formal botanical space—but that’s its charm. Poppy fields, rare tree groves, an herb spiral where I crushed leaves between my fingers. I brought a sandwich and stayed much longer than planned. It’s a quiet, living archive of Anatolian flora—and a peaceful break from Istanbul’s harder edges.

Address: TEM Yanyolu No:32, Ataşehir

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This was a week of subtle rhythms—of shadow and light, string and stone. Istanbul always has its grand stages, but often, the beauty lives in the little scenes.

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Layers of Color, Layers of Time

This week was a blur. Reentry after being away is usually like that. I visited an exhibition, an unexpected open studio, and a couple of places that reminded me how many versions of Istanbul there really are, always overlapping, always alive.

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Bir Arada II: Fulya Çetin & İlhan Sayın” at Yapı Kredi Gallery

May 9, 2025 – January 4, 2026

On a humid summer afternoon in Beyoğlu, I stepped into the cool, hushed space of Yapı Kredi Gallery to see the second edition of Bir Arada, this time featuring Fulya Çetin and İlhan Sayın. Both artists have been active since the 1990s, and while their visual languages are distinct, the exhibition draws a gentle thread between them—through nature, resistance, and a shared sensitivity to the seen and unseen.

Çetin’s Daydreams is tender, luminous, and layered with ecofeminist meaning. Her depictions of women and nature feel like small acts of reclamation. There’s no aggression in the work—but there is insistence, a refusal to separate the human from the vegetal. I found myself leaning in to catch the quiet details: a leaf, a gaze, the curve of something not quite named.

Sayın’s The Night of the Deer brought a different kind of stillness—more shadowed, more architectural. His reflections on nature’s quiet endurance, set against time and manmade structures, carried a meditative weight. Deer, ruins, and fragmented forms all seemed to speak of what outlasts us.

Together, the artists offer a vision of a non-anthropocentric universe—one where humans are not at the center, but among many living forms. The exhibition layout, designed specifically for the Yapı Kredi building, encourages slow movement and soft attention.

Bir Arada II is both political and poetic, and in its refusal to shout, it somehow resonates more deeply.

Yapı Kredi Gallery is located at İstiklal Caddesi No:285, Beyoğlu, Istanbul.

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 Balat – Layers of Faith and Color

Ongoing

I spent a morning wandering Balat, beginning at the Bulgarian Iron Church and ending with a slice of cake at a corner café. Pastel facades, crumbling archways, an old man playing a flute to himself in a doorway. I peeked into antique shops and got mildly lost down a steep side street filled with drying laundry and bird cages. This neighborhood is a living museum—but also a home. That tension is what makes it special.

Address: Balat neighborhood, Fatih (start near Mürselpaşa Cd.)

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This week was full of old walls, soft music, and vivid textures. It reminded me that Istanbul is best understood not by the skyline, but by its surfaces—those small, beautiful things up close.

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Out of sight, but not out of mind.

I’m not in Turkiye for a few weeks. I know I’ll miss a lot, but I’ll be experiencing different art and culture ☺️

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Spring Rituals and Rooftop Views

Mid-April in Istanbul feels like a celebration of light. The trees are fully in bloom, balconies burst with geraniums, and everywhere I turned, people were sitting outside—reading, talking, sipping tea. This week I stayed close to the center but high above it, drawn to rooftops and windows, and the way the city looks when you give yourself a little distance from it.

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“Behind the Shadow”– Hüsamettin Koçan at MERKUR

March 15 – April 19, 2025

At MERKUR Gallery this spring, Behind the Shadow offered something rare: a deeply personal collaboration that carried the warmth of touch into the realm of contemporary art. Hüsamettin Koçan, a name long familiar for his poetic visual language and cultural advocacy, turned his attention here to a shared memory space—one shaped not only by his hand, but by the collective hands of women in Bayburt, where he was born.

The bead weaving technique, revived and reimagined through this collaboration, became the emotional and material core of the exhibition. These weren’t nostalgic gestures or decorative flourishes. The beads, stitched into canvas, oil paint, and kitsch domestic materials, told stories about continuity, heritage, and the invisible labor behind beauty. The piece Kadının Güneşi I, with its bright palette and shimmering surface, felt like a sun breaking through fabric—light filtered through memory and craft.

What moved me most was how the show made space for these women’s gestures without appropriating them. Their presence was felt in the material, the rhythm, the patience. Koçan’s role wasn’t to elevate craft to “art” but to dissolve that boundary altogether. Here, crochet met canvas, tradition met abstraction, and the result was something deeply rooted but open-ended.

The title, Behind the Shadow, lingers. Perhaps it refers to the countless unnamed women whose artistry has shaped cultural life quietly, persistently. Or maybe it’s about what remains when fame, theory, and ego step aside. What’s left is human texture—made of thread, light, memory, and care.

Address: MERKUR Gallery, Hüsrev Gerede Cad. No: 37, Teşvikiye, Istanbul

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 Zeyrek Çinili Hamam – The Restored Baths

After years of renovation, this 500-year-old hamam in Fatih has reopened, and it’s absolutely worth a visit. I didn’t go for the bath (yet), but explored the restored interiors—glazed İznik tiles, soaring domes, and cool stone halls that feel untouched by time. The museum sections give fascinating insight into Ottoman bathing rituals and everyday life. A hidden jewel.

Address: Dervişali Mah. Çinili Hamam Sk. No:6, Fatih

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There’s something about rooftops and old stones that slows you down, reminds you that this city has always been layered—empires over empires, stories on top of stories. And spring makes it all bloom again, in its own rhythm.

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A Week of Contrasts and Quiet Discoveries

There are weeks in Istanbul that feel like a perfect blend of motion and stillness. This was one of them. Spring rains came and went, umbrellas bloomed like street flowers, and the Bosphorus sparkled when the sun finally pushed through. It was a week for contrasts—bold exhibitions, quiet corners, and moments of pause between the pulse of the city.

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Moon, Sun, and Moon – Cem Güventürk at Müze Gazhane

February 9 – April 13, 2025

On a gray, blustery afternoon in Kadıköy, I found myself at Müze Gazhane wandering through Cem Güventürk’s solo exhibition Moon, Sun, and Moon. The title alone suggested something cyclical, elemental—almost ritualistic—and the show did not disappoint. What unfolded inside was both strangely humorous and deeply melancholic: a meditation on being human, being contradictory, and being uncertain all the time.

Güventürk builds his work around the question “Who am I?”—but without any pretense of an answer. Instead, the show embraces a kind of existential comedy. Across 25 canvas works, 14 paper pieces, and five sculptures, he draws on symbolic language that feels intuitive, even if not fully decipherable. Moons, suns, distorted faces, scribbled figures—they read like fragments of a dream you almost remember.

What struck me was how personal this all felt, even in its absurdity. His characters—whether in paint or carved form—don’t posture. They wobble. They ache. They shift between defiance and vulnerability in the space of a brushstroke. I lingered at one canvas where a tiny figure held up a banner with a single word scratched into it. I couldn’t tell if it was protest, celebration, or confusion—but it didn’t matter. I recognized the feeling.

This show doesn’t aim to explain art, or life, or even itself. It points instead to the futility of neat answers—and finds poetry there. Güventürk isn’t offering salvation through art; he’s offering a shared shrug. And sometimes, that’s exactly enough.

Address: Müze Gazhane, Hasanpaşa Mahallesi, Uzunçayır Caddesi No:1, Kadıköy, Istanbul

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 Surp Krikor Lusavoriç Armenian Church

Ongoing

One afternoon, I took a detour through Karaköy and stepped into this beautiful Armenian church on impulse. Quiet, cool, with shafts of light streaming through the upper windows. The scent of wax and stone. I sat for a few minutes and listened to the stillness. I’m not religious, but the calm wrapped around me like a blanket.

Address: Kemeraltı Cad. No:107, Karaköy, Beyoğlu

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The city showed me this week that quiet moments often hold the loudest meaning. A drawing of an ordinary street. A rainy walk to a forgotten church. A cracked canvas that speaks of time. Istanbul always leaves room for reflection—if you let it.

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Spring Unfolding in Bright Strokes

The first week of April brought a noticeable shift. Pink buds appeared on the Judas trees along the Bosphorus, and the city seemed to exhale into spring. The energy was lighter, the light a little longer, and I found myself meandering more—taking the long way to galleries, letting myself get a little lost on purpose. This week was about brightness, texture, and finding joy in unexpected corners.

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“The Skin We Live In,” Koray Ariş at Arter

December 12, 2024 – August 3, 2025

I finally made it to Arter to see The Skin We Live In, Koray Ariş’s expansive exhibition — and I’m so glad I did. It’s not often you get to see such a deep dive into one artist’s inner architecture, let alone one who has shaped the very language of sculpture in Türkiye. With over 300 works spanning decades, this show didn’t feel like a retrospective so much as a living anatomy of his practice.

Walking through it, I had the sensation of being inside Ariş’s mind — or maybe inside his hands. So much of the work is tactile, even when it’s abstract. Leather, metal, cord, wood — these are not neutral materials in his world. They carry memory, sensation, tension. Many of the forms hovered somewhere between the mechanical and the organic, like limbs that could also be tools, or cocoons mid-transformation.

The title, The Skin We Live In, echoed for me throughout the show. There was an intimacy to the way these sculptures inhabit space — not intrusively, but with quiet presence, as if each had its own breath. I kept thinking about the idea of skin as boundary and threshold, how it defines but also conceals. Ariş’s work doesn’t shout. It insists — gently, relentlessly — that we pay attention to what lies beneath the surface.

By the time I left, I felt altered in some small but lasting way. I can still feel the curve of one piece in my mind, like a muscle flexed and stilled. This was sculpture not as monument, but as memory: precise, vulnerable, and deeply alive.

Address: Arter, Irmak Cad. No:13, Dolapdere, Istanbul

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 Yıldız Park in Early Spring

Ongoing

I went midweek, early, when the park was still waking up. Dew on the grass, birdsong overhead, and gardeners quietly trimming hedges. The old Ottoman pavilions shimmered in soft light, and I watched couples on benches and aunties with flasks of tea. A walk through Yıldız Park feels like slipping out of the city without ever leaving it.

Address: Yıldız Mah. Çırağan Cd., Beşiktaş

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This week reminded me that spring doesn’t need a grand entrance. It arrives quietly—through a warm breeze, a pink blossom —and suddenly, you realize you’ve turned the page.

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In Stillness, Form

Some weeks move quietly, but leave a deeper imprint. I didn’t rush through galleries or race across the city — instead, I let myself settle into places that invited stillness. Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye’s stoneware bowls held the air like suspended breath, while the ancient rooms of the Archaeological Museum seemed to pulse softly with memory. Each visit reminded me that there’s power in form, rhythm in restraint, and a kind of grace in simply looking — without needing to explain.

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Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye at Galeri Nev Istanbul

25 February – 28 March 2025

I visited Galeri Nev Istanbul to see Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye’s latest exhibition, and the stillness of the space was the first thing that struck me. The room was silent but filled with presence—row after row of pale stoneware bowls, arranged with almost reverent simplicity. Each piece, handmade in 2024, looked like it had always existed, yet somehow newly born.

There’s a quiet authority to Siesbye’s forms. She uses the ancient coiling technique and a wooden kick-wheel—no molds, no electricity. That physicality is palpable in the curves of each vessel. Wide, smooth bodies taper to narrow bases that seem to hover just above the table surface, balanced on shadows. Their sharp, slightly flared rims hold the eye: crisp lines that frame the dark interiors like thresholds.

The palette was restrained—mostly whites, with a few bowls in soft lavender, powder blue, or plum. Nothing decorative, no surface patterns, just the tension between glaze and clay, weight and lift. A few had faint horizontal lines just beneath the rim, like a quiet anchor holding them down. It’s said those lines are added to stop the bowls from appearing to float away. And I believed it.

What moved me most was how each bowl seemed both solitary and part of a larger rhythm. Differences in height, curve, and hue created a visual tempo—like breath. The variations were subtle, but intentional. Each piece had its own tone, its own presence, and yet together they formed a kind of quiet symphony.

This is mastery through restraint. Decades of refinement made visible through simplicity. I left feeling calmed, as if I had just stood before something both fragile and eternal.

Galeri Nev Istanbul, Firuzağa Mah., Hayriye Cad. No:18, 34425 Beyoğlu/İstanbul

Address: Bankalar Cd. No:10, Karaköy, Beyoğlu

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 Rezan Has Museum: Archaeology in the Basement

Ongoing

I wandered into this small private museum near Kadir Has University almost by accident. Tucked beneath a restored Ottoman building, it houses a surprisingly rich archaeological collection—including terracotta oil lamps and Roman-era glass. The lighting is low, the air cool, and you can almost hear the footsteps of centuries. It’s one of those places that remind you how deep Istanbul’s roots go.

Address: Kadir Has Üniversitesi Cibali Kampüsü, Cibali Mah. Fatih

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This week’s encounters weren’t loud or dramatic, but they stayed with me. I kept thinking about how form itself — whether ancient or newly shaped — can hold a kind of quiet knowing. And maybe, in a city as intense as Istanbul, those moments of stillness are a way to stay balanced.

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Into the Crater, Into the Garden

There’s something about mid-March in Istanbul that feels transitional—not quite spring, but no longer winter. The air is softer, the ferry rides less frigid, and galleries seem to fill with people lingering just a bit longer in front of the art. I spent a rainy afternoon in Galerist, and a few days later I wandered into Gülhane Park without a plan, just following the scent of wet soil and early blossoms. Both places held something unexpected—one a storm of myth and art, the other a secret path behind palace walls. It felt like moving between extremes: fire and water, urgency and stillness. But each offered a kind of refuge.

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“The Volcano Lover” at Galerist

March 13 – April 26, 2025

I stepped into The Volcano Lover at Galerist not quite knowing what to expect — and found myself pulled into something far larger than an exhibition. It felt like walking into a landscape shaped by ancient forces, where history, myth, and the raw materials of the earth collided in bursts of light and shadow.

Curated by Anlam de Coster, this ambitious group exhibition brings together nearly 40 artists from across the globe, including Türkiye, to explore the volcano as both symbol and phenomenon. The show moves seamlessly between centuries — Pietro Fabris’s 18th-century depictions of Vesuvius, newly commissioned works by contemporary artists, and everything in between. The result is not a timeline but a constellation: fragments of meaning circling around that volatile, unknowable core.

What struck me most was how differently each artist approached the theme. Some looked inward — treating the volcano as a metaphor for emotion, repression, or transformation. Others went outward: exploring destruction, regeneration, or the mythological pull of molten rock. I found myself lingering over a sculpture that felt like a charred relic, then moments later captivated by a delicate drawing that seemed to glow from within. There was no single style, but a shared intensity. As I moved through the space, I kept thinking: this is the quiet before an eruption.

The reference to Susan Sontag’s The Volcano Lover is more than a title. The exhibition draws directly on her themes — obsession, displacement, eros, knowledge — and the volcano as a site of both death and revelation. And yes, it’s hard not to think about today’s world. The show acknowledges that we’re living under our own metaphorical volcanoes: ecological crisis, cultural collapse, political rupture. But instead of despair, it offers renewal. Creation through pressure. Beauty through rupture.

Works by Melike Abasıyanık Kurtiç, Hera Büyüktaşcıyan, Ahmet Doğu İpek, Elif Uras, Yusuf Sevinçli, Burcu Yağcıoğlu and dozens of others build a dialogue across time and geography. Nineteen of these artists are being exhibited in Türkiye for the first time — and it shows. The room vibrates with new voices, new tensions, and new ways of imagining collapse and rebirth.

This isn’t a show to rush through. I left feeling cracked open — in a good way. The Volcano Lover is alive with urgency and strange beauty. You don’t just look at the works. You feel them under your skin.

Address: Galerist, Meşrutiyet Caddesi No:67, Beyoğlu, İstanbul

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 Gülhane Park & The Forgotten Gate

On a cloudy weekday, I wandered into Gülhane Park without a plan. I hadn’t been in months, and the early spring flowers were just beginning to bloom. There’s a lesser-used gate on the park’s east side that leads directly toward the back of the Topkapı Palace walls—it always feels like entering a secret. I found a bench near the rose beds, watched the cats stretch out in the grey light, and just breathed. The scent of damp earth and the sound of seagulls. Istanbul peace.

Address: Gülhane Park Entrance, Alemdar Mah. Kennedy Cd., Fatih

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This week felt like a deep exhale. After the intensity of earlier months, it was refreshing to simply take in light, space, and sound without needing to make sense of it. I needed the cool hush of Gülhane.

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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.

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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.

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 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

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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.

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