All displays include screens that show videos of the process involved in the intricate art of calligraphy production according to the traditional techniques. Apart from this a new technological experiment is being tested by museum-goers, in the form of “Augmented Reality” where museum-provided iPads are held up to markers in the exhibition that are recognized by the application and consequently open a system that give further detailed information about items on display. Users can, for example, turn the pages of the korans on display to see the entirety of the item. Downstairs, the original family rooms are also on display, and the Augmented Reality system allows for viewers to see old photos of Sakıp Sabancı and his family in the exact rooms that they are standing in for a kind of time-travel-like feel.

Sakıp Sabancı (d. 2004) began the collection in the 1970s, moving on to exhibit the items in major museums abroad in 1989 and on, where they were greeted with such wide enthusiasm that the idea of creating a museum in Istanbul sprouted. After expanding the collection, the family mansion was generously handed over to the Sabancı University in 1998 and was converted into a museum. In 2002 a modern gallery was added to the complex and opened to the public among a beautiful garden of exuberant green trees and a view of the Bosporus. Sakıp Sabancı Caddesi No. 42; P: (0212) 277 22 00

This multiple award-winning documentary traces Istanbul’s transformation in the last thirty years, beginning by explaining how various studies done in the 1980s by the World Bank and other international entities showed that government officials must limit Istanbul’s population to no more than 5 million and create various industrial centers in Turkey for migrants. The population of Istanbul at the time was of 3.5 million people. A general lack of urban and regional planning and a concerted effort of making Istanbul a world-class financial megacity led to the situation where millions of migrants are now settled in poorly constructed slums (gecekondu) around the city, dramatically increasing Istanbul’s population to a staggering 15 million. This put an unbearable pressure to the city’s resources, and from Azem’s perspective, this ticking time bomb of mounting social and economic pressures will lead to a situation of “chaos” in the near future.

From the construction of the undersea rail tunnel Marmaray and third bridge projects to the constantly decreasing green spaces, Ekümenopolis puts the finger on various ecological and social issues. The main argument is that the unbounded growth of the city is dangerous on many levels, and this is communicated by using two different levels of discourse. First, the filmmaker interviews city architects, urban planners, environmental engineers, economists, and sociologists to get an intellectual perspective on the city’s issues. They all explain, with examples and statistics, the collision course the city is headed to. Then, the film takes the audience to various city slums to talk with the many urban dwellers that are directly affected by many of the government’s poorly planned urban policies. The story of a group of 15 families living by the Atatürk Olympic Stadium in the neighborhood of Altınşehir who lost their homes to the government’s zoning policies is particularly interesting as it portrays the microcosm of the struggles and tribulations of migrants in a hostile environment.

With an imposing photography and a beautiful soundtrack that tries to be as encompassing as the interviews in capturing the sights and sounds of the city, Ekümenopolis does a pretty good job of raising awareness on Istanbul’s social and ecological future. The film invites the audience to rethink Istanbul in terms of renewable and sustainable development by stepping outside the profit-driven mindset that has governed city planning for the past three decades. For those who care about Istanbul and its future, this film is a definite must-see.

Fiction spilling into the real world is the theme, and apart from the objects in the museum, including household items and personal effects among others, it is also Kemal’s obsession that has become palpable in the man who created him. Pamuk’s own urge to collect objects related to the life of his novel is the driving force for the resulting space dedicated to a time that has long since passed and characters only readers know intimately.

The museum is composed of 83 glass displays of varying sizes that correlate with a chapter in the book, including a whole case displaying Fusun’s more than 4000 lipstick stained cigarette butts arranged in chronological order. The museum can be viewed Tuesday through Sunday between 10am and 6pm and is located in the Çukurcuma district. Çukurcuma Caddesi No: 24, Çukurcuma; P: 0212 252 9738

This is Dans Afrika, Istanbul’s first and only African drumming and dance group, mostly composed of members from Senegal and Guinea and entirely united by a mutual passion for the music. Surprisingly, the sole Turk of the group and the manager, Inci Turan brought the concept to Turkey after spending several years in New York City where she regularly attended African dance fitness classes. Upon moving back to Istanbul in 2005, she missed the classes so much she began teaching them herself.

The group's music director and Inci's partner, Guershon (Sean) Jocelyn, a New Yorker of Haitian and African descent, was introduced to the music through Inci. He quickly fell in love with the drums and the connection it provided to his roots. Jocelyn’s rhythmic passion led him back to Senegal in 2011 where, under the guidance of professional musicians such as master Balaphonist Kandioura Diabate, he acquired a deeper understanding of the music and a rejuvenated drive to make Dans Afrika a success.

Soon after returning to Istanbul, Sean extended a helping hand to the same drummers he had met back in Senegal, Kandioura, Salif Peker, and Ibrahim Iradiaw. They had come to Istanbul as part of a Senegalese day performance in Sultanahmet. Sean and Inci aided them in finding a home and gave them the opportunity to continue playing music with Dans Afrika. Later on, two professionally trained Senegalese dancers, Mimi and Zita, who came to Turkey to earn a better living, joined the group, adding mesmerizing visuals to the deep rhythm of the drums.

Another drummer, Alasanne Diop, a Rastafarian of Senegalese descent, lived in Paris, North Korea and Hong Kong prior to Istanbul, where he performed and taught African drumming. Hoping to one day support himself entirely from drumming, he simply said “for me, I just want all the Turks and people living in Istanbul to hear about us, come see what we are doing and appreciate what we are bringing here culturally.” The master balaphone player, Kandioura Diabate comes from a GRIOT family, who tell their history to the next generations through music and dance, and is the cousin of famous Kakosali Diabate. Kakosali, who trained Kandioura, is the famous balaphone player of the first African Dance company Les Ballet Africaines (Guinea National Dance Company) that made African dance and music popular around the world.

Today, given this pool of talent, Dans Afrika has reached a new level. They practice regularly, teach two classes per week, and are building a pipeline of upcoming performances. The group is doing something truly remarkable – importing African culture to Turkey in a raw, authentic and fun way. They do it out of love, not for money or out of necessity, making it something worth supporting.

Their next performance is on Tuesday, May 22 at Cuba Bar in Asmali Mescit. They also teach dance and drumming on Sundays in Taksim. You can find out more about classes and upcoming shows at www.afrikadansi.com or send an email to afrikadansi@gmail.com.

The IKSV Jazz Festival, sponsored by Garanti Bank, has chosen jazz for exactly these reasons, its innovative nature and multifaceted explorations in terms of both voice and instrument. The festival, which has taken place every year since 1994, not only focuses on jazz but also genres such as rock, folk, and popular music in its selection of artists. Since its inception, the festival has brought the likes of Herbie Hancock, Tony Bennett, Eric Clapton, Lou Reed, Elvis Costello, and Diana Krall to Istanbul among many others.

This year the festival has another fantastic selection of musical guests from varying genres and countries, all arriving to bring their unique auditory experiences to the Istanbul audience. Notable performances include:

Marcus Miller (July 5): Miller gained notoriety on a global scale as a bassist for important names such as Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, and Luther Vandross. The musician, who is also a talented jazz composer and producer, is also a multi-instrumentalist, classically trained in clarinet while also playing keyboard, saxophone, and guitar.

Till Brönner (July 6): Brönner has become one of the most important names among jazz trumpet players gaining notoriety with two Grammy nominations and a best selling album in his native Germany. Brönner, who has received the prestigious German Echo music award on five different occasions, has shared the stage with such big names as Dave Brubeck, James Moody, Natalie Cole and Tony Bennett.

Antony Hegarty (July 9): Hegarty’s voice is defined by a profound yet gentle melancholy that gives his songs a penetrating beauty. The English singer, composer, and visual artist who has collaborated with such important names as Lou Reed and Björk, will give a very special Istanbul concert with musical accompaniment by the 39-member Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra.

Caro Emerald (July 10): Samba, jazz, bossa nova, and catchy lyrics blend perfectly in Dutch jazz singer Caro Emerald’s music. The young sensation broke chart records with her debut album Deleted Scenes from the Cutting Room Floor (2010), which spent 30 weeks at number one on the Dutch album chart. You probably know her from “A Night like This” or “Back it Up.”

Erykah Badu (July 13): When Baduizm came out in 1997, neo-soul was born along with its queen Erykah Badu whose signature headwraps came across like a crown of color along with the beauty of her voice. Five albums and four Grammies later, Badu is still a name known all over the world and an essential part of the IKSV Jazz Festival.

Esperanza Spalding (July 16): Spalding won the Grammy for Best New Artist in 2011 which made her the first jazz artist to ever receive the title. The musician, who alternates between upright bass and bass guitar during her performances while also singing, has released four albums since 2006.

Keith Jarrett (July 18): One of the most important names among jazz pianists, Jarrett’s talent has given him roles both as a composer and pianist of jazz and classical music. Having played with such important names as Miles Davis, Art Blakey, and Charles Lloyd, the pianist will be joined by the rest of the famous trio members that have been defining the jazz music genre since 1983.

Morrissey (July 19): The Smiths, with lead singer Morrisey, were termed by critics as one of the most important alternative rock bands to emerge out of the British independent music scene in the 1980s. Now Morrisey, as part of the Istanbul Jazz Festival, will return to bring his dynamic voice and stage performance to an 80s nostalgic Istanbul.

The full listing of events can be found at the official webpage.

The earliest of the four series, 1799’s Caprichos (Caprices), is a mordant satire on societal hypocrisy and injustice, in which no one escapes the artist’s censure, least of all the corrupt and venal clergy of Goya’s day, or the monks represented as vampire-ish creatures who must go into hiding at sunrise. The nocturnal and the supernatural figure in the Caprichos, and the bats and owls of its best-known print, El sueño de la razón produce monstruos (The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters), crop up elsewhere in the series. Animals are a frequent vehicle for satire in the Caprichos, such as the parrot of ¡Que Pico de Oro! (What a Golden Beak!), lecturing upon a judge’s bench to a crowd of imbeciles, or the donkeys of Tú que no puedes (You Who Cannot), sitting on the backs of the human pack animals who struggle to hold them up. The Caprichos’ picture of male-female relations, while unremittingly bleak, is at least even-handedly so; in this mercenary world, men and women are equally likely to “fleece” and “pluck” each other – whether through prostitution, or through its scarcely more respectable equivalent, marriage.

Goya’s famous series The Disasters of War, created between 1810 and 1820, is far more earnest and direct in its approach. Shunning animal fables and half-human monsters for the real-life horrors of Napoleon’s invasion of Spain, these images and captions require little interpretation for the most part. A man, tied to a post before an unseen firing squad, waits to be executed – for the crime of possessing a penknife. French soldiers gun down unarmed Spaniards, both men and women. An execution by hanging takes a grisly turn when the tree is not high enough. Though Goya’s sympathies clearly lie with the Spanish victims of the war, his desire to expose human cruelty is unpartisan: the Spaniard in Lo Mismo (The Same), raising his axe above a French soldier pleading for mercy, is definitely a less than heroic figure.

While you might expect the inhumane sport of bullfighting to receive similar treatment at Goya’s hands, this is not the case. The Tauromaquia (1815-16), offering nothing less than a history of bullfighting from pre-Moorish and Moorish times down to Goya’s day, is openly admiring of the bullfighters who risk life and limb before these huge and terrifying beasts. The etchings portray the various innovations in bullfighting over the centuries, as well as bullfighting celebrities like the legendary Martincho, who in one print sits calmly on a chair before a charging bull, and in another awaits its approach standing on top of a dinner table placed in the arena.

The final series, the Follies or Proverbs (1815-24), partly returns to the moral world of the Caprichos, but here the tone is less didactic and less satirical than in earlier series, and the “message” of each print is not always as clear. The ring of women in Disparate femenino (Feminine Folly), carrying a sheet into which male bodies fall – as into a pit – recalls the mistrust of women found in Goya’s earlier etchings, and Disparate matrimonial (Matrimonial Folly) – in which husband and wife are fused together like Siamese twins – presents a similarly bestial view of humanity. Nonetheless, the symbols and subject-matter of other etchings – featuring circus animals, men strapped to Da Vinci-esque flying machines, or an old man wandering among phantoms and shadows – are as open to interpretation as those of a dream.

While Goya’s etchings are the main focus of the show, the dozen or so oil paintings on display are also worth viewing, with portraits of important personages like Goya’s best friend Martin Zapater, and surprisingly down-to-earth representations of King Carlos IV and Queen Maria Luisa. One unexpected delight in this show was a series of so-called tapestry cartoons – oil paintings Goya created while working at the Royal Tapestry Factory of Santa Barbara – portraying children climbing trees, scuffling in the street, or playing leapfrog or seesaw. In one painting a bunch of children play at soldiers; in another, a child carries on his back a wicker basket to which horns have been attached: it is a pretend bullfight. Poignantly anticipating the violence and brutality of the works you will see soon afterwards, these touching portraits of childhood innocence show Goya at his least misanthropic, and serve as a brief respite from the adult world of horrors to which he was such an eloquent witness.

Goya: Witness of his Time, curated by Maria Oropesa, runs at the Pera Museum through July 29^th.

These are only small segments from the many plots that will come alive on stages big and small all over Istanbul for this year’s Theatre Festival hosted by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (IKSV). The festival, marking the foundation’s 40^th year of existence, will run between May 5^th until June 5^th featuring a rich mural of productions.

While leaning heavily on Turkish theatre, the festival will also include plays from a more international scope, including works from Germany, France, England, and Switzerland.

Plays from the international segment include:

Thomas Ostermeier, of the Schaubühne Berlin, interprets Shakespeare’s famous Hamlet with his avant garde style taking the form of a camera that allows viewers to keep track of all characters simultaneously. The play, which usually includes twenty characters, will only feature six actors, including the famous Lars Eidinger who will be playing Hamlet himself.

Famous French choreographers JoséMontalvo and Dominique Hervieu take Monteverdi’s Baroque Opera Orfeo combining music, dance, and painting with seven dancers and nine musicians from the world famous Cirque du Soleil. The main character of young Orfeo will be played by famous dancer Luca Patuelli who was born with a muscle disorder that affects his legs.

Franz Kafka’s short story Kafka’s Monkey (Kafka’nın Maymunu) about a monkey who aims to protect its life by trying to act human is successfully depicted by actor Kathryn Hunter, winner of the Laurence Olivier Award, who has worked with important directors such as Peter Brook. The play is directed by Walter Meierjohann.

Hans or Heiri (Hans yada Heiri) will be performed upon a 360 degree rotating stage, combining the circus, dance, and music. Swiss performers Martin Zimmermann and Dimitri de Perrot, and other stage members of equal agility, will perform silently in a rotating house composed of four different rooms.

The 1950s play by Eugène Ionesco entitled Rhinoceros (Gergedan) served as a criticism of the upsurge of Communism, Fascism, and Nazism after World War II. This time French director Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota will recreate the absurdity of a town where every person slowly turns into a rhinoceros.

Notable Turkish productions include:

Love Letters(Aşk Mektupları) a Pulitzer price nominated play by A.R. Gurney, revolves around two characters who live separated lives but read the notes, letters and cards they have written to one another for the past fifty years. The play is an unconventional love story, and will be performed by Turkish Theater legends Müşfik Kenter and Kadriye Kenter.

Anthony and Cleopatra(Antonius ve Kleopatra) the love story told by the words of Shakespeare is coming to Turkey for the first time with the very famous and talented actors Haluk Bilginer and Zerrin Tekindor as the main characters. Make sure to see the play, directed by Kemal Aydoğan, before it premiers in this year’s “Shakespeare’s Globe 2012 International Shakespeare Festival” in London.

I am Bertold Brecht(Ben Bertold Brecht) will be performed and directed by famous theater actor Genco Erkal where the poetry, stories, and songs of Bertold Brecht are visually explored, cabaret style. Along with actress Tülay Günal and Yiğit Özatalay on piano, the order of the world and the ravages of war will be questioned.

The festival will also highlight Chinese culture in Turkey with three special events:

The Shanghai Song and Dance Ensemble, one of the most prestigious of its kind, will be bringing the ethnic dance drama of China to Istanbul on the 5^th and 6^th of May.

The Beijing Opera Group, will blend singing, reading, acting, fighting, and dancing into one for its Istanbul audience on the 7^th and 8^th of May.

Beijing Dragon and Lion Street Theatre will bring the colors and characters of China to Istiklal street and Tünel for everyone to enjoy on the 8^th of May.

There is of course much more. To view the entire festival program, head to the official website.

The casting for their first show took place during the first weeks of 2011. “It was tough,” recounts Heather, “very few people showed up, so we had to hold three auditions in total to get the cast.” She used every resource available, from opening a Facebook page and constructing a webpage to bringing in friends of friends to get together a cast of “15 of the finest amateurs.” They finally had enough people to make their first production, Love and Other Nonsense in which five short plays, monologues, and original songs were presented at Hayal Kahvesi Bistro during the second week of April 2011. The tickets for the show were sold out, and the capacity of the rather small performance space was overflown with curious expats and locals who enjoyed the show, giving it positive reviews and demanding another one. Auditions for the second performance were held right away.

Many more people showed up to these auditions and a new crew was chosen for the second play. The initial rehearsals were often held at different bars in the Beyoğlu area. These meetings happen in a rather joyful environment where drinks and jokes flow all night, but it is Heather who keeps everyone in line. She is famous for being very strict with rehearsal schedules, and that’s simply because of her commitment to each show. During the past year,The Square Peg Theatre Troupe has gotten much more professional, and Heather acknowledges the learning curve based on her experiences of directing the crew. “Many mistakes were made during the first plays,” she remembers jokingly. “I had the crazy idea of buying everyone’s drinks during the first rehearsals. Most of the actors are heavy drinkers and it ended up putting a strain on my wallet.”

Since their second show, the Troupe has been playing original sketches written and directed by some of the crew members. “We get together with Heather and a few others to have a couple of drinks and brainstorm ideas,” comments Jordan Duquette, who has been with the crew from the start. “We then vote with the rest of the Troupe and choose the best ideas to work on sketches. Also, we encourage all the other members of the crew to write their own material,” he says.

This collaborative effort changed the tone and rhythm of the performances, as many of the sketches are now based on the crew's experiences of living in Turkey with all its idiosyncrasies and peculiarities. Expats who go to the shows feel a strong personal connection with the stories, which closely relate to their daily lives. The expats’ shared adventure of life in Istanbul draws in bigger crowds of foreigners to each performance. That’s why, after their third show, the Troupe now presents their show at Romeo and Juliet, which has a much bigger space than Hayal Kahvesi Bistro.

Even though the Troupe is still a non-profit community group, their rehearsals and performances are getting much more professional. They are now able to incorporate audiovisual elements to their shows. For example, during their last show, they performed original songs with live musicians on stage. They have also integrated videos and short films into their shows, all created by the Troupe. More recently, they have introduced the concept of themed shows. For Halloween and Christmas, the Troupe performed small shows, complemented with parties where people dressed accordingly and from which the proceeds went to finance the group’s activities.

Perhaps most importantly, they no longer rehearse at Beyoğlu bars. They rented a rehearsal space, which used to be a sweatshop, in Tarlabaşı. The Space, as it has been named, is a place that Heather and the crew intend to turn into a cultural center that would be open for anyone who wants to hold writing workshops, small exhibitions, poetry readings, movie nights, open mic nights, or present small theatrical shows and other types of cultural activity. Right now, The Space is still in the making, and it heavily relies on donations from good souls that have seen the potential of the crew and their ideas.

Thousands of foreigners who live in Istanbul sometimes have a hard time finding activities suited for them, especially when it comes to performing arts. Theater is definitively one of those areas with a lack of options for people who don’t speak Turkish. For an ever-growing population of expats living in Istanbul, The Square Peg Theatre Troupe fills this gap. A profit-minded person might ask, “And what’s in it for them if they are not making any money?” But as one of the crew members said during the interview, “Instead of sitting around drinking beer and complaining about life, why not just do something productive to entertain ourselves, maybe entertain other people and make new friends on the way.”

The film is based on Petro (Elio Germano), a young aspiring actor who has just arrived in Rome in an effort to win the heart of the man he has had a crush on for a long time. His wacky cousin Maria (Paola Minaccioni) helps him find a beautiful old apartment where he settles to start his new life. His hopes are quickly crushed after a series of failed attempts, and he is soon left brokenhearted when the object of his affection rejects him. It is in his depression that he slowly uncovers the mystery behind his apartment. Voices in the night, odd shadows, and other strange phenomena haunt Petro, scaring him off and even making him consider his own sanity. After a few encounters, the ghosts reveal to Petro they are but a harmless group of actors who died in the same apartment Petro lives in now. They soon establish a friendship and the ghosts’ existence gives purpose and meaning to Petro’s disappointing life.

Özpetek’s ability to craft delicate and intriguing stories out of seemingly ordinary characters is once again affirmed in this movie as we see poor Petro struggle with his problems in a rather particular situation. With humor and solid acting, the movie is able to make a surreal situation seem credible, a problem that many ghost stories have. The wonderful vaudeville costumes worn by the ghosts in the house plus the exquisite use of lighting add to the mystery surrounding the characters. Lastly, the beauty of Rome captured on film and the superb soundtrack provided by Turkey’s greatest pop diva Sezen Aksu keep the audience entertained throughout the entire film.

More about Ferzan Özpetek

Ferzan Özpetek was born in Istanbul in 1959. He moved to Italy, where he currently resides, as a student of Cinema History at the Sapienza University in Rome. In 1997 he released his debut film Hamam, which was screened in various film festivals around the world and gave the director a reputation for being daring by touching on social taboos like homosexuality in Turkey. The initial criticisms that he received in Turkey for Hamam was more than compensated when he won the Golden Orange Award for Best Film at the Antalya International Film Festival. In 2003, his fourth film La finestra di fronte was awarded various international prizes, such as the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival’s Crystal Globe Award, the Seattle International Film Festival’s Golden Space Needle, and the David di Donatello Award for Best Director. Magnifica Presenza is his ninth film as a director.

As you walk down the stairs of Pilot and walk into the exhibition area, you are greeted by the confrontational stained-glass work that reads, “The piece might be abstract but it’s made of rubber and looks like the male organ.” An interesting story lies behind this funny statement. A few years back, Abbas sent a piece to a gallery in Pakistan, but it got stuck in customs. When she inquired about her work, this statement was written in the letter that the customs officer sent her. Inspired by this event, Abbas created this piece, her first stained-glass piece since Woman in Black (2011), the stained-glass work that she made for the 2011 Abraaj Capital Art Prize. Abbas explains that this piece tackles issues of morality, differentiating between the good and the bad, especially because stained-glass is such a religious instrument. In fact, Abbas adds, “When I saw the stained-glass windows all around Sultanahmet, I decided that I wanted to work with it.”

Possibly the most captivating series in the exhibition is Idols, featuring photographs of plasticine sculptures made from photographs of working-class people on the streets of Boston, New York, and Istanbul over the past year. A total of 22 photographs are exhibited, 6 of them of Istanbul locals. Abbas created this series like this: she took photographs of ordinary people on the street (cashiers, pharmacists, policemen, random strangers) and then made 22 tiny sculptures out of the hundreds of photos. She then took macro-photos of these tiny sculptures. For Abbas, this series is about “tiny heads and their larger-than-life projections.”

During my brief chat with Abbas, I asked her how Istanbul influences and inspires her work, and she explained that the process is quite “natural” and that she has “an ongoing relationship with the city,” which is clearly reflected in her work. For example, the Idols series became a continuing project for Abbas when she came to Istanbul and realized that she needed to create some photos of people in Istanbul (until then, Idols only included photos of people in the United States). The series will probably be extended even further during the summer when Abbas heads to Pakistan.

In the middle of the exhibition area is an imposing inflatable sculpture, called Su’ar (2011), which tackles issues of impurity, greed, and shame. Su’ar means pig in Punjabi, and the animal represents impurity and also serves as a pejorative, especially in Muslim countries. At the same time, the image of the pig represents greed and money in the West. The piece, which features two humongous piggy banks making love, aims to bring together the different interpretations of this animal in one piece. Abbas’s paper sculptures, entitled Objects (2012), again deal with daily life. The hand-made sculptures, which are in the form of a disposable coffee cup, a can, a water bottle, coins, and an ashtray (with ashes and cigarettes in it), carry crescent motifs (that create beautiful shadows) and read “Please do not step,” which has sort of become Abbas’s motto or signature.

Paradise Bath(2009) features 9 photographs of Abbas bathing a Caucasian woman in an old Ottoman hamam in Thessaloniki, Greece built in 1444 known as Bey Hamam or Paradise Bath. The ritual makes reference to the oriental idea of a colored woman bathing a white woman, and highlights the issues of race and power. This was a performance that Abbas had to really study for, because she spent some time in Istanbul learning the tricks of the trade, and took the hamam equipment from Istanbul to Thessaloniki for her performance.

Abbas has been coming to Istanbul regularly since her first time here in 2007. On the one hand, she finds the city to be more familiar and comfortable. On the other hand, the Turkish audience becomes more familiar with her and her work. “Possibly due to this,” Abbas says, “Istanbul is the place where I get the most responses. The reason behind this I’m aware and unaware at the same time, but I get the best responses from the Istanbul audience, I’m overwhelmed with it.”

Why is the exhibition called Kemal’s Dream?

I don’t come up with names for my exhibits from the beginning. I create a framework where I have questions and I find answers through my work. When I was traveling around Turkey, I started seeing more of these tattoos of Mustafa Kemal. I understand tattoos as being anti-establishment. They come from pirates and from people who are in jail and as such there is a certain culture attached to tattoos. But for a lot of people in Turkey tattoos are pro-republic. This made me question whether the founder of the republic foresaw that he would end up to be a symbol like this and whether Turkey became what he had expected or wanted it to be.

What is the theme of the exhibition?

One of the most important things in the exhibition is the interaction between tradition and modern society. But there are so many different elements within: there are religious parts, ethnic parts, parts about sexuality. But they are all very understated, because I think that in media and in photography everything is about shouting nowadays. Instead of this blatant imagery, I want people to become interested again in looking at very simple day to day things and then say “I really didn’t look at it that way.”

I also deal with youth a lot in this exhibition. Why? Because Turkey is very young and they represent the future of this country. So how the young people are dealing with their ancestors, history, and political situation, not only locally but within this region, is very important.

What did you want the viewer to take with them after seeing the exhibition?

I wanted people to recognize certain things, but I also wanted them to recognize new things. I wanted people to relate to a jump roping girl wearing a headscarf, because they understand “jump rope,” and understand the notion of that playfulness, but they have never seen an image of a girl with a headscarf jumping rope.

Now why is that? Because those two things are not connected. Viewers understand this language because it is composed of the same symbols and words that they have used before. But my work presents it in a different combination and because of this, things start relating to each other in a different and new way. For somebody outside of Turkey, I would hope that the exhibition would put their pre-conceived notions to the test because of these new and different combinations.

When Turkish people go to this exhibition I see them walking around and smiling because they recognize their own culture. I see that there is something clicking, but then I also see that there is something else happening within their minds. When they leave the gallery, my hope is that they have something newly added to the perspective of their own culture.

You traveled a lot around Turkey, and the pieces from the exhibit were taken in cities such as Zonguldak, Tekirdağ, İzmir, and Edirne. How is Istanbul different from the rest of the country?

Istanbul is a hub. There is a reason why Istanbul used to be the center of the Silk Road and why this city was built on this specific position, which has had significant historical impacts. But Turkey has been in a bit of a slumber, and I think right now this is changing because people are again coming to the city, not only from within Turkey but also from around the world. People are coming to the city and are enjoying the history and the mix match of all these different cultures within.

Now, when you compare Istanbul to the rest of Turkey, it’s as if the industrial revolution just finished out there, meaning that people have just recently begun to leave their villages and are moving to big cities. This is something that has already happened in all Western countries. This is very significant because now there are more people in cities than in rural areas and this is causing a very big cultural shift. So, you can see that for people who have just moved from their villages to the city everything is new.

What do you like most about the people you met during your travels?

I love the honesty of the people in the rest of Turkey, I love to connect to a lot of people, and it’s easy because people are so outgoing. I’m not a short guy, you can see me coming through the village, it’s not very easy for me to hide, but it’s very easy for me to be in contact with the people there.

Ahmet Polat’s Istanbul:

Favorite thing about Istanbul: Istanbul is like New York, like London, like Paris, but there’s also something different about this place where there’s a mixture of people coming, passing, or staying which makes it so interesting.

Favorite neighborhood:Fatih, Balat, Eyüp, and pretty much anywhere along the Golden Horn. I enjoy taking a walk from Balat all the way to Eyüp to experience the Greek Orthodox, Jewish, Christian, Catholic, Islamic periods in one stretch.

Favorite place to hang out with friends: Asmalı Mescit
Favorite Gallery: Galeri NON
FavoriteMuseum: Sakıp Sabancı Museum
Favorite bar: Şehir Meyhane(popular hangout of artists)
Lunch:Kantin in Nişantaşı
Who are your favorite up and coming Turkish artists: I love the performance group Hazavuzu

To get more information about the artist and the exhibition, visit Ahmet Polat's website

This year the festival runs between March 31^st and April 15^th at the following cinemas, museums and cultural centers: Atlas Cinema; AFM Fitaş; Beyoğlu Cinema; Citylife; Rexx Cinema in Kadıköy; the Pera Museum; Salon İKSV; and Akbank Sanat.

In addition to the film screenings (which are divided into more than 20 different categories including the various competitions), there will be an array of concerts, guest speakers, seminars and workshops, film classes, and master classes by acclaimed filmmakers like Corneliu Porumboiu, Marjane Satrapi, and Terence Davies.

A major highlight of the festival is the International and National Golden Tulip Competitions. The films in the International Competition will compete for Best Picture, while those in the National Competition will compete in a number of different categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Music, and the competition’s Special Jury Award.

COMPETITIONS

International Competition

Headed by Palme d’Or winning director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, and also features Romanian New Wave director Corneliu Porumboiu. This year’s films include Die Unsichtbare (The Invisible) by German director Christian Schwochow, La Demora (The Delay) by Uruguayan director Rodrigo Plá, and Les Neiges Du Kilimandjaro (The Snows of Kilimanjaro) by French director Robert Guédiguian.

National Competition

Presided over by well-known Turkish author Murathan Mungan; competing films include Ümit Ünal’s Nar (Pomegranate), which won the Special Jury Prize at the 2011 Altın Portakal festival, and Yeraltı (Inside), by former National Golden Tulip winner Zeki Demirkubuz.

One film from each competition will also be chosen to receive an award by a jury of the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI); in addition, there will be an audience vote for the Radikal People’s Choice Award by Radikal Newspaper.

Out of Competition

Features five Turkish films not part of the International or National competitions.

New Turkish Cinema

Features ten films by up-and-coming Turkish directors.

Documentaries

A competition of 12 different documentary films by Turkish and foreign directors.

Cinema Honorary Awards

Three films will be competing for the Cinema Honorary Awards: Halit Akçatepe’s 1976 Süt Kardeşler (The Foster Brothers), Ali Özgentürk’s 1982 At (The Horse), and Ayşen Gruda’s recent film Hacivat Karagöz Neden Öldürüldü (Killing the Shadows).

Human Rights in Cinema Competition

With a jury headed by director Juanita Wilson, films will compete for the Film Award of the Council of Europe (FACE). Competing films include Bé omid é didar (Good Bye), by Iranian filmmaker Muhammad Rasoulof, about an Iranian lawyer’s attempts to gain a visa to leave Iran. Also in the competition is Turkish director Özcan Alper’s recent film Gelecek Uzun Sürer (The Future Lasts Forever), which deals with Turkey’s Kurdish conflict via the story of a young musicologist’s trip to Diyarbakır.

OTHER CATEGORIES AND SCREENINGS

İKSV 40^th year – Cinema and Music

Commemorates İKSV’s 40^th anniversary with screenings of five musical films from the past five decades including Martin Scorsese’s 1977 film New York, New York; Alan Parker’s 1982 Pink Floyd The Wall; and Moulin Rouge!

Akbank Galas

Consists of premieres of new films by important international directors including the comedy Two Days in New York by French actress-turned-director Julie Delpy. Chicken with Plums, by graphic artist Marjane Satrapi (of Persepolis fame) and Vincent Paronnaud; Trishna, Michael Winterbottom’s updating of Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles to present-day India; plus new films by Shakespeare in Love’s John Madden (who will be present at the festival), Martin Scorsese, and more.

Challenging the Years

Presents new films by veteran directors such as Werner Herzog, who returns to the festival with Into The Abyss, a look at those living on Death Row in US prisons. Other highlights include new films by Europa Europa’s Agnieszka Holland, Russian Ark’s Alexander Sokurov, Ermanno Olmi, André Téchiné, Tony Gatlif, and Terence Davies (the last two of whom will be in Istanbul for the festival).

From the World of Festivals

Consists of recent submissions to well-known film festivals and competitions such as Cannes, the Venice Film Festival, and the Academy Awards. Many of the films are by lesser-known directors, but also include selections like L’ordre et la morale (Rebellion) by La Haine’s Matthieu Kassowitz, and Detachment, by UK director Tony Kaye (of American History X fame), starring Adrien Brody as a substitute teacher at an American high school.

Young Masters

Contains first or second features by up-and-coming young directors from all over the globe (e.g. South Africa, Brazil, Iran, Bulgaria) and includes films like Helvécio Marins Jr. and Clarissa Campolina’s Girimunho (Swirl), a portrait of life in a village in Northern Brazil, featuring non-professional actors, as well as Atmen (Breathing), the directorial debut of Austrian actor Karl Markovics, about Roman, a young parolee from a juvenile detention center and his efforts to adapt to life outside.

Documentary Time with NTV

Offers a selection of some of the best recent documentaries out there, such as Mama Africa (about South African singing legend Miriam Makeba) by Mika Kaurismäki, the elder brother of Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki; Crazy Horse, about the Parisian nightclub of the same name, the latest work by prolific American documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman; and Micha X. Peled’s Globalization trilogy (China Blue, Store Wars: When Wal-mart Comes to Town, and Bitter Seed), which focuses on the negative aspects of global capitalism. Peled will be present at the festival.

Mined Zone

More experimental than those in the other categories, films in Mined Zone include such works as Hors Satan (Outside Satan), by L'humanité’s Bruno Dumont, the story of a mysterious loner living in the French countryside, and a young woman who becomes his companion; and Belgian choreographer Wim Vandekeybus’s Monkey Sandwich (which ran at last year’s Venice Film Festival), a surreal “portmanteau film with a captivating tangle of stories involving the search for an unborn child, a disturbing hunting trip, a haunted LP, a screaming piglet and a river gone rogue.”

Antidepressant

Promises comic uplift with films like Canadian Ken Scott’s Starbuck, about a sperm donor who learns that he has fathered no fewer than 533 children; Egyptian-French filmmaker Namir Abdel Messeeh’s La Vierge, les Coptes et Moi (The Virgin, the Copts, and Me), about a skeptic’s investigation of sightings of the Virgin Mary among Egypt’s Coptic community; and Whit Stillman’s new film Damsels in Distress, which showed at last year’s Venice Film Festival, about the romantic misadventures of a trio of college girls.

Within the Family

Deals with family drama and intergenerational conflict, via such films as Mika Kaurismäki’s Veljekset (Brothers), inspired by Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, about three half-brothers, Ivan, Mitja, and Torsti, who meet for the 70^th birthday of their father, a man “who they all blame for the failures in their lives”; Israeli director Joseph Cedar’s He’arat Shulayim (Footnote), nominated for a Best Foreign Language Oscar, about an elderly Talmudic scholar’s rivalries with his colleagues – including his own son; and Wymyk (Courage), by Kieslowski acolyte Greg Zglinski, a tale of courage, cowardice, and survivor guilt.

The World of Animation

A selection of some of the best recent work in animated film, including 3D films like Tales of the Night, a story of fairies, magicians, and princesses by Kirikou and the Sorceress’s Michel Ocelot, and Peter Lord and Jeff Newitt’s The Pirates! Band of Misfits, the story of a Pirate Captain’s quest to win the Pirate of the Year Award, with voiceovers by Hugh Grant and Salma Hayek.

Kids’ Menu

Offers four kids’ films from the Netherlands, as part of this year’s celebration of the 400^th anniversary of Dutch-Turkish relations. The program includes works by filmmakers Joram Lürsen, Vincent Bal, and Simone van Dusseldorp.

Midnight Madness

A series of midnight screenings of recent horror/suspense movies, such as Dominik Moll’s Le Moine (The Monk), a recent adaptation of Matthew Gregory Lewis’s 18^th century Gothic novel about Satanism (with Vincent Cassel in the title role), and Ben Wheatley’s Kill List, about a soldier turned contract killer.

What’s Happening in Greece?

A selection of five recent films from Turkey’s crisis-stricken neighbor, such as Christos Karakepelis’s documentary Proti Ili (Raw Material), focusing on the lives of immigrants in Athens who eke out a living by collecting scrap metal. Filippos Tsitos’s Adikos Kosmos (Unfair World), which won prizes for Best Director and Best Actor at last year’s San Sebastian Festival, is the story of a police interrogator’s disillusionment with societal injustice. Istanbul-born actor Antonios Kafetzopoulos, who plays the role of the policeman, Sotiris, will be present at the festival.

A Chinese Cinema Tradition: Wuxia

Features wuxia (martial arts) films by Chinese, Taiwanese, and Hong Kong directors like Zhang Yimou, Ang Lee, and Wong Kar-Wai, including Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which was hugely successful in the international box office.

Filming Revolution

Deals with recent political upheavals in the Arab world and elsewhere, with offerings like Andrei Zagdansky’s Orange Winter, about Ukraine’s Orange Revolution; Fragments of a Revolution, consisting of amateur videos of the 2009 election violence in Iran; and Stefano Savona’s Tahrir – Liberation Square, about the historic 2011 Egyptian Revolution. There will also be a screening of Gillo Pontecorvo’s seminal 1966 film La battaglia di Algeri (The Battle of Algiers), about Algeria’s struggle for independence.

In Memoriam

Honors the work of recently deceased filmmakers such as Theo Angelopoulos, Ken Russell, and Ömer Lütfi Akad, with screenings of movies like Angelopoulos’s O Thiasos (The Traveling Players), about an itinerant theater company in wartime Greece; Russell’s over-the-top Tchaikovsky biopic The Music Lovers; Akad’s classic 1966 film Hudutların Kanunu (The Law of the Border), starring Yılmaz Güney as the smuggler Hıdır; and more.

Special Screening: Turkish Classics Revisited

Provides audiences the chance to see a restored copy of Halit Refiğ’s 1964 film Gurbet Kuşları (Birds of Exile), the winner of the very first Altın Portakal Film Festival, which tells the story of a family’s migration from Southeastern Anatolia to Istanbul.

Other Special Screenings

Includes UK filmmaker Mark Cousins’s 15-hour documentary The Story of Film: An Odyssey, which is nothing less than a history of filmmaking from its earliest beginnings to the present day.

Atlas, İstiklal Caddesi No. 209, Beyoğlu; P: (0212) 252 85 76

AFM Fitaş, İstiklal Caddesi Fitaş Pasajı, Beyoğlu; P: (0212) 345 62 45

BeyoğluSineması, İstiklal Caddesi No:62, Beyoğlu; P: (0212) 251 32 40

Citylife, City’s Nişantaşı, Teşvikiye Caddesi No:162, Kat 6, Nişantaşı; P: (0212) 373 35 35

Rexx, Sakızgülü Sokak No. 20-22, Kadıköy; P: (0216) 4181084

Pera Müzesi, Meşrutiyet Caddesi No. 141, Tepebaşı; P: (0212) 334 99 00

Salon İKSV, Sadi Konuralp Caddesi No.5, Şişhane; P: (0212) 334 07 00

Akbank Sanat, İstiklal Caddesi No. 14-18, Beyoğlu; P: (0212) 252 35 00

In commemoration of the 400th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Turkey and the Netherlands, the Sakıp Sabancı Museum (which is also celebrating its own 10th anniversary) has undertaken to put on nothing less than “the first large scale exhibition of Dutch Art in Turkey,” in the words of the museum’s director, Dr. Nazan Ölçer. The works in this show, Karanlıkla Işıgın Buluştuğu Yerde…Rembrandt ve Çağdaşları: Hollanda Sanatının Altın Çağı(Where Darkness Meets Light…Rembrandt and his Contemporaries: The Golden Age of Dutch Art) are on loan from Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, as well as from other museums and private collections inside and outside the Netherlands. The phrase “Where Darkness Meets Light” is a reference to the technique of chiaroscuro – the depiction of contrast between light and shadow – for which Rembrandt’s paintings are noted.

The show contains over a hundred works of art – paintings, drawings, etchings, and more – by nearly five dozen different artists (including well-known figures like Frans Hals, Jan Steen, and Jacob van Ruisdael) from the 17^th century, a period widely regarded as the “Golden Age” of Dutch art. When exactly the Golden Age ended is a matter for debate; the information panels at this exhibition (which provide abundant historical background both about Holland and about concurrent historical events elsewhere in the world) suggest that by 1672, Holland’s so-called “Year of Disaster,” the handwriting was on the wall.

As the show explains, the chief source of artistic patronage in the 17^th century Netherlands was not the Church or the (non-existent) monarchy, but rather the townspeople known as burghers. The subject matter of many of the works in this show – whether portraits, landscapes, or still lifes – is accordingly realistic, with pictures of tradesmen like bakers and fishmongers taking the place of saints, archbishops, or dukes. In these paintings you can see homely, prosaic details such as laundry baskets full of laundry, nutshells lying on the floor of a drunkard’s room, blood dripping from newly-slaughtered animals, and still lifes featuring half-peeled oranges and peppercorns (the latter newly available in the Netherlands thanks to the Dutch East India Company’s commercial empire.) Even some of the paintings on Biblical subjects (e.g. Hendrick ter Brugghen’s 1619 “The Adoration of the Magi” or the paintings “King David” and “Isaac Blessing Jacob” by two of Rembrandt’s students) are conspicuous for their lack of grandiosity, and their down-to-earth treatment – bordering on irreverence – of their subjects.

The first Rembrandt work you will encounter in the show is his celebrated 1634 portrait of Haesje van Cleyburgh, which you will probably recognize as the image used to advertise this exhibition on billboards around Istanbul. Rembrandt’s portrait of Haesje is renowned for its veracity of detail (capturing the tiniest wrinkles and lines in her face), to demonstrate which the curators have hung the painting side by side with Frans Hals’s ostensibly similar portrait of Maritge Voogt Claesdr, painted five years later but decades behind Rembrandt in technique. Rembrandt’s un-photoshopped yet never unsympathetic treatment of his subjects is also apparent in his famous miniature portrait of his friend, the Jewish physician Dr. Ephraim Bueno. (The show, incidentally, provides a fascinating look at the flourishing Sephardic Jewish community of the Netherlands, with a painting of the famous Portuguese synagogue in Amsterdam – a tourist attraction even in its own day – and artifacts like a menorah of pure silver.) There is also an excellent selection of Rembrandt’s etchings and drawings, which are notable for their masterful use of cross-hatching. These include 1632’s “The Raising of Lazarus” (also the subject of an oil painting which is not in this show), and an oil sketch entitled “Joseph Telling His Dreams,” whose muted colors only stoke our curiosity about what the finished product would have looked like.

Of course, Rembrandt is only one, albeit the most famous, of the artists in this diverse and wide-ranging show. The reviewer’s own favorites included a number of lesser-known landscape paintings such as Aert van der Neer’s “River View in Winter” (1655-60), portraying a party of ice-skaters on a frozen river, in which the artist’s skill at rendering the texture and color of the ice through swirls of white and blue was quite striking, as was his Impressionistic ability to suggest human forms through the tiniest specks of paint. Gerrit Adriaensz Berckheyde’s “The Golden Bend in the Herengracht in Amsterdam” (1671-2) was also striking for its Magritte-like creation of darkness in the daytime, as well as the startlingly lucid reflection of the canal houses in the water of the Herengracht. The hazy, brown-yellow tones of Jan van Goyen’s “View of a Town on a River” (1645) seemed to pervade everything in the painting (sky, sea, trees, houses, church, and ships), but with an end result of unity rather than monotony.

Many tourists in Europe have had the memorable experience of wandering down a narrow alleyway, emerging onto a big square, and unexpectedly finding themselves face to face with a sight they have only seen, till then, in a book or on a computer screen: the Pantheon, say, or Notre Dame. The same kind of experience awaits you on a smaller scale at Rembrandt and his Contemporaries, where two-thirds of the way through the first gallery, you will suddenly find yourself looking at Vermeer’s “The Love Letter.” This remarkable little painting, one of less than three dozen extant works by the artist, invites you to observe its subjects (a young woman and her maid, who is handing her the letter of the title) through an open doorway, in pseudo-voyeuristic fashion. The painting offers tantalizingly few clues to the questions we would like answered: who is the woman? Does she and/or her maid know the author of the letter? At what precise stage of their courtship has this snapshot been taken? This is one place, incidentally, where you’ll be glad you’ve used the show’s audio guide, from which you’ll learn that the painting of a ship at sea on the wall of the woman’s room would have been an “instantly recognizable” symbol of romantic passion to a contemporary of Vermeer.

After you’ve seen all the works in Gallery One, a flight of stairs takes you down to the show’s second gallery. It must be said that the paintings in this section were of less interest to the reviewer than those in Gallery One. The large, pompous canvases in Gallery Two, depicting trade missions and sea battles, seemed at time like borrowings from a naval museum rather than an art museum. Willem van de Velde the Elder’s 1637 “The Battle of the Downs against the Spanish Armada” was perhaps interesting for being the largest ink-on-canvas work the reviewer had ever seen (and for being displayed side-by-side with a similarly themed painting by van de Velde the Younger) but not for much else. You should, however, come down to Gallery Two to see the short film about Rembrandt playing there, which is informative and worth your time.

All in all, this is a superb exhibition, and as no review can do it justice, the best thing is simply to get on a bus to Emirgan and see it yourself. Rembrandt and his Contemporaries, which is being shown with the sponsorship of the governments of Turkey and the Netherlands, as well as numerous corporations including Sabancı Holding, ING Bank, and Philips,runs at the Sakıp Sabancı Museum through June 10^th.

Sakıp Sabancı Müzesi, Sakıp Sabancı Caddesi No. 42, Emirgan; P: (0212) 277 22 00

Regime change in the Middle East, the world economy in dire straits, youth protests everywhere, and a general dissatisfaction with the political and economic system has opened the door for revolutionary potential and that seems to be the general topic of many festivals this year. The four film festivals this month (Dağ Film Festival, Filmmor Women’s Film Festival, Istanbul Film Festival, and Akbank Short Film Festival) bring to Istanbul some of the top recent productions in a wide array of topics but with a distinct call for change for the nature of the convoluted world we live in today.

Firstly, a small selection of films will be presented at the Dağ Film Festival at the French Cultural Center between 7-11 March. Since 2006, this film festival has been a favorite among environmentalists and all those who care about the future of our planet. Now, in its seventh year, the Dağ Film Festival puts together a series of nature-themed films and documentaries as well as exhibitions, panel discussions, interviews, and seminars in order to raise awareness on the necessity to take care of our environment. As the planet continues heating and as politicians continue to inadequately address the pressing issues of our planet (as it was evident in the last Copenhagen climate summit), the future of our planet rests in the hands of those with the revolutionary spirit to change the path that we are in. (Click here to see the full program.)

This yearFilmmor Women’s Film Festival, which travels around Turkey,is celebrating its tenth year. The festival, which will be held between 9-19 March in Istanbul, has put together a well-chosen program of feminist cinema from the vaults, starting with films from pioneer filmmaker Alice Guy-Blaché and many other successful female filmmakers and artists that have contributed to the world of motion pictures with films like Europa, Europa, The Piano, andOrlando. This year’s slogan “Damn the Evil Eye” intends to project the revolutionary potential of women in our societies, declaring war against a past where culture and tradition determined the female role. With conferences, workshops, distinct theme selections on gender and sexual identity issues, and the special appearance of a group of Tunisian film directors (who were actively engaged in the deposition of their dictator last year and were called “The Tunisian Jazmines”), this year’s festival certainly puts forward a provokingly clear message that change is a must. (For more details on Filmmor, click here.)

Likewise, the Akbank Short Film Festival put a special focus on documentary films this year in an effort to put social reality on the agenda. This year’s festival, which will be held between 19-29 March, will showcase young local and international filmmakers and serve as a platform for new talents. Free screenings, workshops, panel discussions, and conferences, such as the one with master documentarian Can Dündar, will aim to create an environment in which those interested in filmmaking can have a space of dialogue with filmmakers. (Click here for the full program.)

Last but not least, the 31st Istanbul Film Festival, organized by IKSV, will begin at the end of the month bringing the best of world cinema to a city of voracious movie-goers who have been waiting all year for these two weeks when the city smells like celluloid. This year, the festival (which will be held between 31 March – 15 April) will again be the highlight of Istanbul’s cultural scene with more than two hundred films, workshops, seminars, master classes by world-famous filmmakers, special guests, and awards to the best of international and Turkish cinema. This year, two new sections (“Filming Revolution” and “What’s Happening in Greece?”) will explore the issues troubling our times as well as investigate the themes of upheaval and revolution in an effort to explain the parallels between what is happening in the Middle East and Europe. (For more details on the festival, click here.)

Cinema certainly reflects the pathos of an era. During a time of widespread revolution and upheaval around the world, maybe this series of film festivals will help us understand why the world is in the state that it is. Either way, one thing is for sure: film lovers in Istanbul are going to watch some of the most interesting films we’ve seen in recent times.

Art 350 is the newest art gallery to open on Bağdat Caddesi in Erenköy on the Asian Side. It was established as the extension and permanent gallery space of Galata House of Art, an artist collective that was founded in 2011 to serve as a space for exchanging ideas between artists from Istanbul and Berlin. The gallery, which is managed by Christa Frieda Vogel and Şebnem Kutal, will host exhibitions of contemporary painting, sculpture, and photography by Turkish as well as international artists. The venue will also be home to live music and artists’ discussion programs on a regular basis.

Art 350 opened its doors on February 23 with the exhibition “Transfigurative” by Turkish artist Arzu Başaran and German artist Ruth Biller, two artists whose main interest is the human figure and impermanent nature of the human body and thoughts. The title of this exhibition refers to a common concern on the part of Başaran and Biller with “human transfigurations”; Başaran’s work reflects her preoccupation with inequality, societal pressure, and repression, while Biller’s work is more sensuous and lyrical.Both artists use the canvas to communicate their thoughts, while at the same time making use of mixed techniques and tools, such as photographs, thread, and collage.

ART 350, Bağdat Caddesi No. 350, Erenköy; P: (0216) 369 80 50

The aim of Van Gogh Alive, at Antrepo 3 in Tophane, is to shake us out of such complacency. In this dark, cavernous space (the venue for last year’s 12th Istanbul Biennial, along with neighboring Antrepo 5), 3,000 images created from 1,000 Van Gogh works (paintings, watercolors, and drawings) are projected onto the four walls, columns, and floor through a system of 40 HD projectors known as Sensory 4. Seeing these works (or portions of them) on screens nearly 25 feet high not only is a startling experience, but also allows you to focus in great detail on paintings you may have only seen before in miniature on the pages of an art history textbook. A classical soundtrack runs in sync with the projected images, with pieces by Handel, Lalo, Saint-Saëns, Arvo Pärt, and more, in addition to traditional Japanese koto music.

The works featured in Van Gogh Alive date from 1880 to 1890 (effectively the entire career of this late-blooming and short-lived artist), and are grouped into three symphonic “movements”: Van Gogh’s early period in the Netherlands (until 1886), his Parisian years (1886-8), and his final years in the South of France, where he made his best-known paintings. You’ll see old favorites like “Vincent’s Bedroom in Arles,” “Self-portrait with Bandaged Ear,” “Portrait of Dr. Gachet,” “Starry Night,” and more; unless you are a Van Gogh expert, there are also sure to be paintings you haven’t seen before, and one startling image that you never would have guessed was by Van Gogh – see if you can spot it.

In addition to Van Gogh’s artworks, there are brief animation sequences relating to events in the artist’s life, copies of his handwritten letters, and screens with quotations in Turkish offering Van Gogh’s thoughts on his life and career. (Not providing English subtitles for these quotes was the one oversight in an otherwise excellent show). The artworks themselves are not always projected statically: there are details superimposed as you watch (thus mimicking the process of painting a new work), zoom-ins and zoom-outs, fade-outs, and other cinematic tricks – think animated film rather than slide show.

With Van Gogh’s works surrounding you in all directions, and no two areas of the exhibition hall showing the exact same images at the same time, it’s impossible to “do” Van Gogh Alive – to start at the beginning and workyour way through to the end. There is no path to follow, much less the strictly regulated senso unico of a place like the Vatican Musem: you are free to stay put, or wander around at will. (Many of the audience members at Van Gogh Alive chose to watch the show while sitting on the floor, a sight one doesn’t often see in Turkey). The experience of watching Van Gogh Alive is a bit like attending a cocktail party in a movie theater – a very large movie theater to be sure (this is, after all, the place where the reviewer got lost at the Istanbul Biennial last year).

Van Gogh’s paintings become “alive” at this show in the best sense of the word, refusing to lie down, be nailed down, or be neatly filed away and catalogued. Just as you can never hope to overhear every word spoken in a crowded room, or capture every nuance of a conversation, or parse every line of dialogue in a live performance of a play, so a visitor to Van Gogh Alive shouldn’t try to view every image in this 360-degree son et lumière, where the pictures come thick and fast. (You should of course see the whole show – which is about 45 minutes long – at least once in its entirety: unlike a movie theater, Antrepo 3 won’t kick you out at the end of each screening). Needless to say, the reviewer saw many audience members taking photos and/or videos of Van Gogh Alive with their cell phones, cameras, and iPads, an unfortunate symptom of our present-day belief that an experience has not truly taken place until it has been digitally recorded.

The one potential danger of a show of this sort is that it will up the technological ante for exhibitions of other artists’ works, leading to a demand for Rembrandt Alive, Monet Alive, and Cézanne Alive, and a corresponding indifference to Rembrandt, Monet, and Cézanne. Such a theoretical concern should not deter you, however, from attending this striking and original show, a visit to which is highly recommended.

Van Gogh Alive is designed by Grande Exhibitions Australia, with the participation of Turkish pharmaceutical company Abdi İbrahim, celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.

Antrepo 3, Meclis-i Mebusan Caddesi Liman İşletmeleri Sahası, Tophane

Since 2008, the Hodjapasha Culture Center in Sirkeci has offered regular performances of both these dances, and more. The Center is located in a hamam built by Hoca Sinan Paşa, the vizier of Mehmet the Conqueror; constructed in 1470, it is one of the oldest in the city, but fell into disuse several decades ago. What used to be the women’s section of the hamam is now the Center’s exhibition hall, with information panels about the different styles of Anatolian dance. The former men’s section hosts the actual performances, which come in two varieties: a sema performance as well as a Turkish Dance Show. We opted to attend the latter, reasoning that this would be the best way to learn about the range of different Turkish dance forms.

The Turkish Dance Show is indeed a smorgasbord of different dances. Accompanied by a group of live musicians playing the saz, davul, fiddle, garmon (accordion), bass guitar, tambourine, and other instruments, a team of dancers performs a dozen different dances – solo, in pairs, in single-sex and mixed ensemble – from the different parts of Anatolia and the former Ottoman Empire. Here you can see little-known native Anatolian dances such as the misket (from Central Anatolia), the halay (from Eastern Turkey), and the zeybek (from the Aegean); dances that shade off into dramatic performances (such as the Henna Night number from Elazığ, simulating a Turkish bride’s pre-wedding preparations); dances from the Balkans, from the Black Sea region of Turkey, and from Azerbaijan; gypsy dancing from Turkish Thrace; and of course, plenty of belly dancing (both solo and in ensemble) with a surprising twist or two.

The stage in this small, domed space is circular (resembling the stone massage platform called the göbek taşı which was formerly found in the hamam). The audience sits in rows surrounding the stage, with less than two feet between the front row and the edge of the stage (and the dancers), creating an absolute minimum of distance between performer and audience. Given these constaints, the range of motion found in these dances is necessarily restrained (don’t expect somersaults in the air) but the dances are lively, and are skillfully executed. Each dance features its own unique costume, from red flounced Gypsy skirts, to Balkan tunics and puttees, to the riding boots worn by the broad-striding male member of the “Azerbaijani” duo (which the reviewer at first took to be a Cossack dance).

Highlights of this diverse performance included a “Shaman dance” by a solo female dancer dressed in a long white robe, who supplied a periodic cadence to her flowing dance movements by falling backwards onto the ground. In the dark, with fluorescent highlights on her robe, the dancer appeared to be collapsing – or vanishing – into a heap of clothes. If audience response is anything to go on, one of the most successful performers was the solo female belly dancer, who seemed able to manipulate every individual muscle fiber in her torso, and drew great applause (and a few good-humored wolf whistles). The loudest applause of the evening, however, was won by the male belly dancer, who despite his larger frame was nearly a match for his female colleague in suppleness and flexibility, and who – surprisingly – performed with a full beard.

Those seeking indoor entertainment while the weather is still cold could do far worse than attend the Hodjapasha Turkish Dance Show, which affords a good opportunity to learn about the local dance traditions of Turkey and the surrounding regions.

Hodjapasha Culture Center, Ankara Caddesi Hocapaşa Hamam Sok No: 3.B, Sirkeci; P: (0212) 511 46 26 / 36

One of the more recent additions is art ON, which has been at Number 4 Şair Nedim Caddesi since March 2011. The gallery was originally supposed to be located at Number 10 (on in Turkish), which is how it acquired its name; by coincidence, O and N are also the first initials of gallery owners Oktay and Nil Duran – and of course spell the English word “on.”

As a gallery, art ON is small (compared, for example, to its neighbor Rampa), consisting of a single floor with four rooms. Of these, one is used as office space (as is the basement floor) and one as a project room, leaving a small front room with a display window, and a larger room behind it, as gallery space. art ON’s small size and intimate atmosphere make it possible to focus carefully on, say, half a dozen works, without feeling impelled to stay in constant motion as one does at museums and large shows. (That’s not to say that art ON can’t host more than one artist at a time: four of the seven shows that have taken place at the gallery since its opening have been group shows). art ON has exhibited artworks in many different media – painting, photography, sculpture, and new media; the gallery’s director, Sinem Yılmaz,particularly aims to showcase the work of early-career artists.

Our visit to the gallery coincided with the current exhibition For a Moment by young artist Sümer Sayın, also one of the participants in the group show CROSSROADS at art ON last year. (Yılmaz prefers to have artists take part in group shows at first, prior to having their own solo shows). The fewer than a dozen pieces in For a Moment have been well chosen and afford ample material for careful reflection. One section features acrylic on canvas works that play games with geography, such as the ironically-titled “The World is Round,” featuring an incomplete segment of a globe perched cerebellum-like upon a pedestal for our apparent edification, or “The Country of Transition,” in which a long strip of territory shaped like an ECG readout suggests gerrymandering or Bantustan-ing taken to an extreme. The wall drawing “Within the System 2” also brilliantly summons the image of a world map through nothing more than a series of quadrilaterals of varying size, as well as fluid outlines that – on closer inspection – have nothing in common with the actual coastlines of the world’s continents.

There are also a number of other sculptures and prints, plus Sayın’s signature “kinetic installations.” One of these, the cryptically-titled “Yes,” occupies the small display-window room, and consists of what look like the twitching segments of a digital clock. If one waits long enough, however, these segments are transformed into the word YES for a brief moment. This, according to art critic Andreas Schlaegel, is the “moment” referred to by the show’s title: “one surprising and brief moment…when things just click, and everything seems to make sense, the individual elements align and form the ultimate affirmative…it makes you want to wait, like a bride at a wedding, for the magical word to appear.”

The presence of an artwork in a gallery display window, where it can be viewed just as easily from outside the gallery as inside (or, in some spaces, more easily), raises provocative questions about the role of art in public life. Admission to art ON, as with the vast majority of galleries, is free, thus making this enclosed space – partly visible from the street, yet distinct from it – something not quite private and not quite public. It should be said in this connection that art ON’s staff are extremely welcoming, friendly, and willing to answer questions, and on the evening we visited, the gallery door was literally open to the street, despite the cold. Yılmaz has spoken with praise of the 2010 European Capital of Culture Agency’s Portable Art project, which brought contemporary art to cultural centers in neighborhoods like Ümraniye, Tuzla, Fatih, and Küçükçekmece, districts normally considered beyond the artistic pale.

Thanks to the efforts of galleries like art ON, contemporary art is gaining wider recognition in Turkey – and also becoming a lucrative business. In Yılmaz’s opinion, the most significant event of the past 10 years in the Istanbul art world was the sale of Burhan Doğançay’s Mavi Senfoni (Blue Symphony) for well over a million dollars, reflecting Turkey’s burgeoning national economy, with its collectors who are willing to pay large sums for art. Just ten years ago, says Yılmaz, most Turkish artists needed to have day jobs simply to make ends meet, a fact which was the subject of a 2007 show Art & Money curated by Marcus Graf. Nowadays, producing works of art is a career, not just “a hobby or part time job.”

art ON, Şair Nedim Caddesi No.4, Akaretler; P: (0212) 259 15 43

The show, with its collection of black-and-white photographs ranging in date from the 1860s to the early years of the Republic, reveals just how much the city has changed over a century and a half. Photos by approximately a dozen different photographers are on display, in addition to a large number of anonymous images; the work of Ottoman photographer Pascal Sebah (of Sebah & Joaillier) is particularly well-represented. The show, which makes no attempt at covering all areas of Istanbul, focuses exclusively on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus, from Paşalimanı/Kuzguncuk all the way to the mouth of the Black Sea at Anadolu Kavağı. The curators’ decision to begin here (and not further down the coast) is an appropriate one, since it is only north of downtown Üsküdar that one begins to feel one is not quite living in the city.

Information panels provide generous amount of detail about the history of these neighborhoods, many of which (e.g. Beykoz) were semi-independent from the rest of Istanbul until well into the 19th century.The exhibition is particularly informative about the names of the different neighborhoods (there are no fewer than 18 of these between Kuzguncuk and Anadolu Kavağı) and their origins. Anadolu Kavağı apparently refers not to the modern Turkish word kavak (poplar), but to an older kavak which meant “a place where customs duties were collected.” Beykoz, which looks like it means “the Bey’s walnut,” may in fact be Bey kos, “the Bey’s village” – kos being the Persian word for “village.”

Yet it is the photographs themselves – depicting long-vanished modes of life – that evoke the city’s past most tellingly. Ottoman-era ağaç evleri (wooden houses), one of the saddest casualties of Istanbul’s urban transformation, are thankfully much in evidence in these photographs. In a pair of 1865 photos by Pascal Sebah, a trio of veiled female picnickers are conveyed to the top of Yuşa Hill...by ox-drawn carriage. A photo of the Mihrişah Valide Sultan Çeşmesi in Küçüksu contains a shepherd with his sheep – which you probably won’t find there today – and a man selling simit (which you will). Paddle-steamers, the ancestors of today’s Bosphorus ferries, feature in a number of photos; a picture-postcard of the Kuzguncuk İskelesi, like the old postcards sold at second-hand bookshops, has captions in the standard trio of Ottoman Turkish, English, and comically transliterated French. (The French title for this one is Débarcadère de Couscoundjouk).

An amusing pastime at a show of this kind is toexamine a photo– ignoring technical issues like black-and-white versus color – and, without peeking at the caption, ask yourself: what is the earliest or latest date this photograph could have been taken? The presence in a Sebah photo of men in şalvar trousers and fezes dates the image to the pre-Atatürk period, as surely as a public inscription in the Latin alphabet would have dated it to after 1928. A view from Paşalimanı across the water to Beşiktaş and Taksim shows only the horizontal bulk of the Taşkışla – now a campus of Istanbul Technical University – on the hillside, without the Marmara Hotel or Ceylan Intercontinental. Cutoff date: late 1960s. The better your knowledge of Istanbul’s history, geography, and culture, the more precise your estimates will be.

The thrill of recognizing a familiar place in a photo taken decades earlier is akin to the thrill of seeing its satellite image on Google Earth: it is the same, and yet different. Of all the neighborhoods in the show, the reviewer was most curious to see the photographs of Kuzguncuk, where he had once lived himself. Though there were no pictures of İcadiye Caddesi, and very few of central Kuzguncuk in general, it was pleasing to find one of the waterside Üryanizade Mescidi, with its unmistakable gazebo-like minaret. Unfortunately, the show contained no photos of the gargantuan, centuries-old plane tree in Çengelköy, which may date back to before the conquest of the city.

While not all the photographs in a show of this size can be of equal interest, a number of them stood out in the reviewer’s mind, such as Sebah’s photo of the Beykoz Kasrı, looming above a Bosphorus so still as to look like a meadow of grass; Guillaume Berggren’s picture of the Kıbrıslılar Yalısı in Kandilli, in which the fading of the print made the opposite shore appear as though in a foggy haze; and a group of sailboats in Beykoz that looked for all the world like Viking ships. Go see From Konstantiniyye to Istanbul, and you are sure to come up with half a dozen of your own favorites. The show – with its nostalgic and at times striking images of a now-vanished city – forms the perfect accompaniment to a booklike Orhan Pamuk’s nonfiction workIstanbul: Memories and the City (which should ideally be read beforehand) and is well worth a few hours of your time.

Pera Müzesi; Meşrutiyet Caddesi No. 141, Tepebaşı; P: (0212) 334 99 00

“The feeling of destruction of the Ottoman Empire, the poverty and melancholy caused by the ruins have been things that defined Istanbul for me my entire life. Like every citizen of Istanbul, I spent my life either battling or eventually embracing this melancholy,” says Orhan Pamuk in his book Istanbul: Memories and the City. Indeed, every Istanbul resident, no matter if they were born here or settled her much later in life, is doomed to such melancholy, coupled with a constant desire to leave. But before you can lift a finger, this desire is overshadowed by the awareness that you could not live anywhere else. As Orhan Pamuk writes in the same book, not far from the first quote, “Life can’t be that awful. After all, you can take a walk by the Bosphorus.”

But Istanbul is much more than the Bosphorus, and you can discover a whole new world at any moment — by stepping into a gallery, arts institute, or museum, for example. No need to look further. In certain parts of town you will come across a museum, gallery, or arts initiative on every corner.

In 1933, the artists Zeki Faik İzer, Nurullah Berk, Elif Naci, Cemal Tollu, Abidin Dino, and Zühtü Müridoğlu formed the D Grubu (D Group) and set up their first exhibition at the hat shop under the historic Narmanlı Yurdu building in Beyoğlu. If these artists saw the city now, they would undoubtedly be joyfully surprised. While it must have been a totally different and potentially inspiring experience to set up an exhibition in a hat shop, galleries are necessary nowadays for artists to express and share their works and worlds.

FROM HUMBLE HAT SHOP BEGINNINGS…

Even though Turkey’s first gallery was opened by Isamil Hakkı Oygar in 1945, most art lovers consider Maya Sanat Galerisi(1951-1955), established by Adalet Cimcoz, the first spark in Istanbul’s art scene. This short-lived and legendary gallery not only exhibited and traded art, but also hosted countless inspiring gatherings in its time. Isn’t this what galleries are all about? They provide a space to exhibit, share, and discuss works of art, shaping the relationship between artists and the public.

In the 70s and 80s, artistic aspirations were burgeoning at the same time as the concept of “an industry of culture” began making its way into popular terminology and the country’s artistic works endeavored to reach audiences in the outside world: a dilemma fit for a naive and sentimental novelist. (One should read Pamuk’s last book The Naive and Sentimental Novelistto look further into this dilemma!) The 90s, to quote the curator René Block, were a true “Istanbul miracle”. The approach of this miracle could be sensed at the first Istanbul Biennial in 1987 and at the galleries in the Maçka– Nişantaşı – Teşvikiye triangle. Maçka Sanatand Galeri Nev, in particular, deserve extra credit for their contributions. So does the private sector: Garanti Platform, Proje 4L, Akbanksanat, Siemens Sanat, Kasa Galeri,and others used their capital to support contemporary art, Robin Hood-style. Although museums such as Sakıp Sabancı, Istanbul Modern, Pera, santralistanbul,and Borusan Contemporary have made the biggest impact in the last decade, our hearts are still with the independent galleries.

The 2001 economic crisis was an impetus for the new generation of galleries to support contemporary art and open up to the global art scene. Murat Pilevneli founded Galerist in 2004 in Teşvikiye, then moved the gallery, unwillingly, to Mısır Apartmanı. Here’s how he explains the situation: “The 2001 economic crisis toppled the established arts market. Works that had been sold for thousands of dollars became worthless overnight. This was a point of departure for contemporary art.” Curator Beral Madra sees it differently: “Art is sailing in the turbulent waters of global politics and economics. We are faced with a much more shrewd and elitist approach than the naive, idealist, and romantic atmosphere of the 1980s and 1990s.”

FROM TAKSIM SQUARE TO GALATA

Packed with food, shopping, and art options, Istiklal Avenue is an indispensable part of Istanbul. Walking from Taksim Square to Tünel, you can visit Akbanksanat for a quick look through its collection. Or simply head straight to the century-old Mısır Apartmanı. Take the elevator to the top floor and browse through the galleries as you make your way down: Galeri Nev, Galerist, CDA Project, Pi Artworks, and Galeri Zilberman. It’s hard to leave once you’re inside. A little further down Istiklal, you’ll come across another venue striving to make art a part of daily life: SALT, by Garanti. Just across from SALT, you can find ARTER, a project by the Vehbi Koç Foundation. Aiming to contribute to the country’s artistic production, the venue that recently hosted Patricia Piccinini is now hosting Kutluğ Ataman’s exhibition. Across the avenue, Borusan Müzik Evi can also be added to an art lover’s itinerary for its “Light and Matter” exhibitions. If you’re not exhausted by this point, you can visit Arte Istanbul at Kumbaracı Yokuşu and the many independent art events in the back alleys of Galata…

TOPHANE PROVES ITS WORTH

Tophane, one of the most eccentric neighborhoods in Istanbul, with its back leaning against Istiklal Avenue and it’s worth its salt when it comes to the arts. The first spark was ignited on No. 5 Hayriye Avenue in 1998, when carpenter Armenak Usta’s workshop transformed into Apel, the most romantic gallery in Istanbul. Since 2008, many galleries, including the pioneers Outlet and NON, have opened in the neighborhood, one after the other. Galeri Outlet was vacated after an unpleasant incident during the opening of an exhibition one evening in September 2010. Now Outlet has resurrected as Pilot in the bohemian Cihangir neighborhood. Pg Art Gallery, Pi Artworks, Daire, Elipsis, NON, Rodeo, Depo, artSümer, and Galeri Manâ, all of which are situated along Boğazkesen Avenue in Tophane, are still welcoming art lovers.

AKARETLER IS BOOMING

In its heyday, Sıraevler in Akaretler hosted countless important names, including the court painter Fausto Zonaro. These days, the neighborhood is determined to become Istanbul’s new art and design hub. In addition to more design-oriented galleries such asartlimits, Autoban, and Derin Design, the area also hosts Galerist and Rampa, which are true temples of contemporary art. If you continue further up the hill and connect to the Maçka – Teşvikiye – Nişantaşı triangle, you should visit Mac Art, Çağla Cabaoğlu, Dirimart, and, Galeri x-ist, particularly if you’re interested in discovering young, up-and-coming talents. Last but not least, make sure to stop by Art On to see exhibitions by established international artists as well as young Turkish artists.

In the early 1990s, there were just a handful of design-oriented firms in Turkey, such as Koleksiyon, Nurus, Beymen, Vitra, Arçelik, and Beko. The professional organization of designers, ETMK (Industrial Designers’ Society of Turkey), was established in 1988 and emerged as one of the leading organizations in this sector after 1994. However, the key turning point for the rise of design in Turkey was the 1995 customs union between Turkey and the European Union, which forced Turkish companies to be more competitive in the market. Competition makes companies seek novelty: better and newer products. Turkish companies, no longer able to copy and reproduce foreign equipment, tools, and goods, began to recognize the power of original design and branding.

The consequences were twofold: the demand for Turkish design and designers increased, and renowned foreign designers were employed by companies wishing to gain a respected position in international markets. Fritz Frenkler, Anette Ponholzer for Nurus, and Ross Lovegrove for Vitra are just a few examples that come to mind. Designers’ Odyssey ‘98: The Adventures of Turkish Designers, a design exhibition accompanied by an international conference, was not only a nice welcome to the new millennium, but also served to stimulate design in Istanbul.

However, this rise of design was ruptured by two unfortunate catastrophes: the Gölcük earthquake in 1999, which claimed about 17,500 lives (according to official figures), and the 2001 economic crisis, which caused the collapse of several major Turkish banks.

Both of these events changed the design scene, in some ways for the better. As a result of the earthquake, the construction industry boomed, earthquake-safe housing schemes were developed, gated communities flourished, business and shopping centers proliferated, and high-rise buildings began to occupy the blue sky of the city, irreversibly denting the historical skyline of Istanbul. Obviously, these new residential and business spaces required new decorations, furniture, and accessories, which paved the way for an increasing number of design departments, journals, and a growing design industry.

In recent years, the world has noticed the achievements of internationally based Turkish designers such as Alev Ebuzziya, Ayşe Birsel, Defne Koz, Mirzat Koç, and Koray Özgen, and the overseas achievements of Turkish designers such as Oya Akman, Aziz Sarıyer, Can Yalman, and Inci Mutlu. Turkish design companies such as Autoban, Ilio, Derin, Design Base, Keystone, and Maybe Design have further consolidated the global presence of Turkish design. Nevertheless, the great leap occurred after 2005. In this year, Istanbul Design Week was established, the Istanbul Modern Museum was opened, design programs began airing on television, and the monthly Radikal Design Journal was published.

Designer shops always attract interest. The home decor sections of established brands such as IKEA, Mudo, Mozaik, and many others have made design widely accessible to a much broader audience in Turkey.

Fashion designers are using the term “design” more than any others, and are, in many ways, the design leaders in Turkey. Istanbul’s prominence as a center of fashion design has been further promoted by the annual ITKIB (Istanbul Textile and Confection Exporters Union) competitions and regular annual shows in Istanbul Fashion Week, the establishment of the Association of Fashion Designers in 2006 and IMA (Istanbul Moda Academy) in 2008, as well as the opening of several fashion design departments at various universities in recent years. The quasi-realistic dream of the textile sector is to convert Istanbul into one of the leading fashion centers of the world. The Turquality programme is a financial support project initiated by the government, which aims to create Turkish global brands. Needless to say, several young fashion designers and businesses get support from this fund for their international shows and marketing activities.

The “Design TURKEY Awards” were founded in 2008 by the government in cooperation with the ETMK. These awards are expected to occur every two years going forward, with designers submitting works that are exhibited and presented to an international jury. A prestigious award ceremony is held in Istanbul for the winning designs in various categories.

No doubt about it: design is a hot topic, and Istanbul is in the driver’s seat. Two forthcoming international events are simply the icing on the cake: the Istanbul Design Biennal, which will occur for the first time in 2012, and the design congresses of IDA (International Design Alliance) in 2013. Although the evolution of design in Istanbul is a miraculous story, this does not mean that she is a design city now. “Design” is being used in common parlance as a catchphrase, placed on shop fronts, employed by salesmen as a part of their sales pitch, appropriated for fancy advertisements and promotions, and inflated for branding and marketing. A new toy for an old capital? Well, let’s be fair, let’s wait and see.

The red, brick mansion, located at the foot of the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge, is quite eye-catching with its unusual exterior and grandeur. Constructed at the beginning of the 20^th century, this 10-floor building is widely known as Perili Köşk (Haunted Mansion), and has been serving as the headquarters of Borusan Holding since 2007.

On 17^th of September, Borusan Holding launched an innovative art project called Borusan Contemporary, turning their headquarters into an office-museum, granting access to visitors to see their incredible art collection on weekends. Apart from some notepads, phones, family photographs, and personal libraries, employees clear away everything on their desks so that visitors can enter the Haunted Mansion and walk around the admirable office-turned-exhibition-space.

Borusan Contemporary is currently housing two collections on view until 11 December 2011: Segment #1,the selection of works brought together by Dr. Necmi Sönmez, an independentcurator, art critic, and writer based in Düsseldorf; and Yedi Yeni İş (Seven New Works), the contemporary art collection curated by Sylvia Kouvali and Mario Codognato.

The prioritization of New Media Art, including photography, video and light art, is the departure point of the Segment series, which will be renewed every three months. The title ofSeven New Worksis quite self-explanatory as the exhibition features seven new works by artists Aslı Çavuşoğlu, Burak Arıkan, Cevdet Erek, Ergin Çavuşoğlu, Esra Ersen, Gülsün Karamustafa, and Nasan Tur.

According to Dr. Necmi Sönmez, what unites the works presented in Segment #1 is the zeitgeist, “the spirit of the times,” and Seven New Works surely mirrors the same theme with a focus on contemporary art from Turkey.

Upon entering the exhibition space on the second floor, five works of theSeven New Works exhibition greet the viewer. The first work is Burak Arıkan’s interactive projection Collector Artist Network: Phase 1, which allows the visitors to explore the mansion through a self-referencing project. Arıkan’s mapping investigates the relationships between collectors in Turkey and artists here and abroad. The viewer can click on a name on the touch screen and follow the thread of network connections with more clicks and drags. Even though the piece is visually unresolved now, better coherency may be reached when this ongoing project develops.

Around Arıkan’s on-going mapping project are four video pieces. One of them is Ergin Çavuşoğlu’s Desire Lines (Duende), a three-channel video piece that deals with the dissonance between history and destiny with regards to what is considered rational. While two of the screens show scientific approaches in archeological excavations, the other screen is dedicated to two fortunetellers who interpret the findings by “reading” the objects found on the site. The work is quite overwhelming since the audience has to follow all three screens simultaneously. Regardless, Desire Lines (Duende) is sure to encourage the viewers to have a fresh look at one of the oldest discussions in the world: the relationship between history, truth, and rationality.

Nasan Tur’s video The Histories of Maraş/Varosha brings together the stories told by tour guides in the deserted district of Maraş/Varosha in between northern and southern Cyprus. The division of Cyprus is one of the unresolved political issues of modern European history, and it is still a touchy subject for many. Tur’s video work is based on the narratives of three tour guides who offer different views of Maraş/Varosha, which became a tourist attraction after military control of the area ceased.

The 3^rd 2^nd Bridgeby Cevdet Erek is a video work about the construction process of the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge, the second bridge that connects the Asian and European sides of Istanbul. The work is pieced together by photos and videos that the artist took and also found in archives. Although an inspired piece, the lack of narrative and linear visual unfolding inevitably force the viewers to tackle with the play on spaces constructed in the video.

In Different Estimations Little Moscow, Aslı Çavuşoğlu attempts to build a collective memory by capturing remnants of the violence that took place in the northern town of Fatsa in Ordu during the 1980 military coup. Right before the coup, Fikri Sönmez, mayor of Fatsa, formed “People Committees” to install a participatory democracy in the district, only to be imprisoned during the coup and to have the democracy project destroyed. The video features visuals of abandoned spaces (one of which is where the “People Committees” took place), police cars, informer’s masks, and books, aiming to find a connection between present-day Fatsa and its past. Although, the visuals seem to focus on absence, they also reveal the traces of that violence and the scars that it left behind.

Upon exiting the space where these brand new works are featured, the viewer walks face first into a piece from Segment #1—the interactive mirror sculpture that Daniel Rozin installed in the second floor elevator hall. These mirrors “sense” the person standing before them and change their angle, thus changing the shape of the sculpture depending on the viewer’s motions.

From here on, the white-wall exhibition space ends and some of the best works of 20^th century contemporary art in Segment #1 take over. One signature work of the office/museum is Peter Kogler’s wall paintingcalled Untitled (2008), specifically designed for the mansion. The digital print of Kogler’s abstract labyrinths carries one all the way up to the tenth floor, covering the elevator halls and staircase walls of the entire building. It is highly recommended that the visitors walk up, instead of taking the elevator because surprising artworks await them, one of which is Alan Rath’s Flying Eyeballs on the way up to the fifth floor.

Before one reaches the fifth floor, Esra Ersen’s video Casting for a Canary Opera and Gülsün Karamustafa’s Insomniambule—the two remaining video works of Seven New Works—can be seen on the fourth floor across from the office space.

Meticulously installed on the walls and hallways all around the 10-floor building are pieces by 20^th century’s leading artists, such as Liam Gillick, Jerry Zeniuk, Sol LeWitt, Marina Zurkow Donald Judd, Keith Sonnier, Robert Mapplethorpe, Daniel Rozin, as well as works of Turkish contemporary artists, such as Ayşe Erkmen’s ceramic tilesColorful (2009), Kutluğ Ataman’s sculpture form Journey to the Moon (2008) and video Water (2009), Bengü Karaduman’s video Mirror Shadows (2007), and Bedri Baykam’s I’m Bleeding painting series.

Overall, the office allows the viewer to have a more personal experience with the artworks as family portraits and personal notes of executive directors mingle with paintings, sculptures, and photos, as well as the fantastic views of the Bosphorus. Especially the light sculpture Ballroom Chandelier Installation by Keith Sonnier in the meeting room at the top floor and the Istanbul Wall Painting on the two adjacent walls of the room commissioned to Jerry Zeniuk are must-sees for the ultimate office/museum experience.

If you would like to see one of the most inspiring collections in Turkey coupled with an innovative approach to exhibiting, head to the Haunted Mansion. The museum can be visited on weekends between 10:00 am and 08:00 pm. The entrance fee is 10 TL for adults and 5 TL for students and seniors.

When: 17 September - 11 December 2011

Where: Borusan Contemporary; Perili Köşk, Hisar Caddesi No.5, Baltalimanı; P: (0212) 393 52 00

The Pera Museum has long been known for its excellent permanent collection of art dealing with the interaction between the Ottomans and the West. In addition to a permanent exhibit entitled Intersecting Worlds, featuring portraits of Western ambassadors in the Ottoman Empire (and Ottoman ambassadors in Europe), the museum also boasts a superb collection of Orientalist painting, consisting of Western artists’ fanciful depictions of scenes from lands then belonging to the Ottomans.

One name stands out among all the others: Osman Hamdi, commonly known by the title Osman Hamdi Bey. A veritable Renaissance man, Osman Hamdi was one of the leading archaeologists of his time (and the founder of Istanbul’s Archaeology Museum), an author and politician, and a painter of considerable talent. In depicting scenes from his own homeland, the Europhile/Francophile Osman Hamdi favored the Orientalist style of painting employed by Boulanger, with whom he studied in Paris. Osman Hamdi’s emblematic painting The Tortoise Trainer has been part of the Pera Museum’s permanent collection since the museum opened in 2005.

The present show features two paintings by Osman Hamdi from the University of Pennsylvania’s archives, which have never been exhibited in Turkey before. (Many of the pieces in Osman Hamdi Bey and the Americans were displayed at last year’s exhibit Archaeologists and Travelers in Ottoman Lands at the University of Pennsylvania Museum.) The show also focuses on two of Hamdi’s archaeological colleagues, the American photographer John Henry Haynes (fallen into obscurity today but best known in his time for his photographs of the Assos excavations), and the German archaeologist Hermannn Vollrath Hilprecht, who held a position at UPenn in the late 19th century, and who played a leading role in the excavation of the ancient Mesopotamian city of Nippur.

Avoiding museum-exhibit overkill, this small but extremely well-chosen show (curated by Professors Renata Holod and Robert Ousterhout of the University of Pennsylvania) fills a single floor of the Pera Museum’s modestly-sized space with Osman Hamdi’s paintings, photographs of all three figures, photos taken at the sites of their archaeological digs, original copies of their correspondence, sample findings from the Nippur excavation (including an astounding series of miniature cuneiform tablets), and a wealth of information about the three men and their work.

As soon as you enter the first room of the exhibition, you are met with the sight of Osman Hamdi’s huge 1891 painting entitled At the Mosque Door, one of the two paintings from UPenn’s archives. The painting, discovered as recently as 2006, is ostensibly a picture of the entrance to the Muradiye Mosque in Bursa, although (as the exhibit panel explains) the low-relief kufic inscription high up on the mosque’s front wall is in fact taken from the Çoban Mustafa Paşa Camii in Gebze, where Osman Hamdi’s family lived. (The dome of that mosque can be seen in the background of the painting A View of Gebze, painted by Osman Hamdi ten years earlier and also on display in this exhibit.) The other previously unseen painting, hanging in the other room of the exhibit, is Osman Hamdi Bey’s 1903 work The Excavation at the Temple Court in Nippur. As Professors Holod and Ousterhout have explained, Osman Hamdi never actually visited Nippur, the painting being based on a photograph taken by Haynes. Hamdi Bey inserts Hilprecht – who is not in the photo – into the painting, standing out among all the native diggers and porters through his white uniform and pith helmet.

One leaves this exhibit with a sense of the great fluidity of identity that characterized these men – Hilprecht and Haynes in their seeming efforts to become “Orientals,” Osman Hamdi in his to become a Frenchman and a Westerner. A photograph of Haynes, with handlebar mustache, could be that of any 19th century American gentleman. Immediately to the right of this photo is another one in which the young American, wearing the costume of an Ottoman functionary, has become almost unrecognizable. A bronze bust of Osman Hamdi Bey – dressed only in a Western-style jacket, without his normal fez – makes him look for all the world like a chic turn-of-the-century Parisian. Hilprecht, the pith-helmet wearing symbol of German authority, also dresses like an Ottoman at times, and enjoys signing his name in cuneiform in his correspondence.

Running until the 8th of January, this exhibit is a must-see for anyone with an interest in Osman Hamdi’s art or Ottoman and Western archaeology.

Where: Pera Museum;Meşrutiyet Caddesi No. 141 Tepebaşı; P:(0212) 334 99 00

When: Until January 8

How much: 10 TL; 7 TL (groups of 10 or more); 5 TL (discount)

Kutluğ Ataman is an internationally acclaimed artist whose interest lies in creating “talking portraits” mostly of marginalized individuals, but essentially in capturing how people fictionalize themselves through language. In Mesopotamian Dramaturgies,exhibited at Arter until November 16th, Ataman has clearly moved away from solely presenting individuals as he did in his past works.

The body of works presented in this exhibition explores the limits of language, and demonstrates that even in the absence of language many stories are being told, resistances are being advanced, and cultural constructs are being reproduced.

The themes of Mesopotamia - the geography considered as “the cradle of civilizations” - and dramaturgy - the art of writing and producing plays - are merged to create a vast and ambitious collection of works that try to reclaim a complex history that presents a bottomless well of stories, histories, inventions and disasters. In addition, this chapter of Mesopotamian Dramaturgies featured at Arter has a particular focus on modernity and the ways in which ordinary people have appropriated modernization in Turkey. (The project is an on-going one and will extend to Syria, Northern Iraq, and Iran.)

Many of the videos in this exhibition were shot in eastern Turkey, close to the birthplace of the artist, and focus on how people express their imagined identities, and thus constantly make sense of and fictionalize their existence. For instance, in the Pursuit of Happiness, a peasant woman from eastern Turkey tells Ataman about her troubles of finding the right man, the problems in her previous marriages, how she lost her virginity, and the pressures of her family. Perhaps, her idea of marriage and relationship to men is a metaphor for Turkey’s dysfunctional relationship with the West and modernization, which have been forced into a static relationship since the foundation of the Republic. The West has often been thought of by Turkish politicians, journalists, intellectuals, and citizens as mutually exclusive with modernity. This piece clearly shows that this supposedly Western ideal of “pursuit of happiness” is appropriated by the protagonist and used to create a particular identity for herself, which she expresses in a garrulous but intriguing monologue. It is quite difficult to understand her at times because of the speed and manner that she talks in, but also due to the sound that gets mixed up in the exhibition space. In addition, the translation of her words sometimes fails to reflect the original version due to the impossibility of translating certain phrases and notions. This only strengthens Ataman’s suspicion of literal and cultural translation.

Right next to this work is English as a second language, presented as a two-channel video installation. Facing each other are two life-size teenage boys, one projected on the wall on the right and one on the left. They hold Edward Lear poems in their hands, trying to read them out loud. Even for a native speaker, the poems are almost undecipherable. English, the global language that supposedly connects us all, seems to fail to do the trick this time. The students do not only go through the trouble of learning English as a survival tool to be present and active in the global world, but they are also forced to understand the nonsensical limericks of Edward Lear. Positioned in the middle, the viewers find themselves in a ridiculous position of listening to undecipherable English and following these teenagers as they shuffle the sheets of papers in their hands, confused. It is crucial to note here for what purpose English is being taught, and how the language is instructed in class. Having an idea of how words are pronounced does not make a culture mobile or accessible, nor does it raise the level of education. It does not go anywhere beyond pretense and leaves the students in a lost and puzzled position, and the viewers doubly so.

A few steps further stands the Column inspired by Trajan’s Column, which was erected to describe the victories of the Roman Emperor. However, Ataman’s version is a column that is mute, only showing portraits of Kurdish individuals on separate TV screens diversified by a selection of old and more technological screens. In this piece, Ataman points at the time that has passed, and the only column erected is a mute one representing the silencing of the people in southeastern Turkey. This is a column that reminds us how language and communication can fail, once again, exemplified in this piece by mute Kurdish individuals who have pleaded for years to have a right to speak, learn, and teach their native language, Kurdish. This silence can be interpreted as a form of resistance as well as just a yearning for the basic human need for speaking one’s mother tongue. As much as silence can be seen as passive, it also allows for an active projection of ideas, thoughts, and stories.

Stories can ground one, as well as uproot and shake the notion of truth as in the fantastic mocumentary Journey to the Moon. This groundbreaking work appears to tell the story of a historical event that took place in an eastern village in Turkey during an election campaign in 1957. The villagers, having been moved by the speech of a politician, want to be a part of this mass modernization process and try to go to the moon by transforming a minaret into a spaceship. The black and white footage, as if found in archives, and the stop-motion photography technique used in the film gives the story an air of truthfulness even though the narrative was written by the artist. Interviews with leading academics, journalists, and scientists in color add to the validity of the events, leaving the audience in awe and confusion as to the realness of the incident. Thus, in this work, Ataman, once again emphasizes his belief in the fake construct of what we call history. The influence of the interviews also makes one question authority and how knowledge can be manipulated when used in certain manners. The film is presented as a two-channel video piece in this exhibition, which unfortunately takes away from the power of the narrative.

The artist’s latest work Mayhem, which was shot in Argentina at the Devil’s Throat, has multiple screens and projections of gushing water on the walls of the exhibition space. The cleansing and destructive power of water symbolizes the force of change. When applied to the Mesopotamian geography, this water, which originates in Argentina, loses its geographical significance. By decontextualizing it, Ataman emphasizes cultural constructions around nature and natural phenomena. He also points at the passing of time and the change that occurs in a particular geography. Sometimes, we are too absorbed by the present time and forget that once there was no nationalism, once we were a hunter-gatherer society, once pagans ruled the Mesopotamian territory…

In this series, which Ataman initiated in 2009, what strikes the viewer most is the balance, or the imbalance, between the “talking portraits” and mute ones. The artist almost suggests that lingual and cultural translation is impossible at times, depending on the context and the force behind it. The impossibility of translation, in Ataman’s view, is a reflection of the difficulties in transcending the dualities that are imposed onto people who are usually viewed as one single mass, belonging to one group or the other. By exposing personal stories, Ataman tries to explore the area between what is very personal and stereotypically societal. Hence, the artist brings out all that is controversial and thus human. Mesopotamia is a great example of that due to the very many ways its history and geography has been imagined and treated throughout the ages. In this regard, Mesopotamia offers a platform for the audience to revisit historical and cultural constructs that have shaped individuals’ and societies’ understandings of the world at large.

If interested, the viewers can watch the 222-minute documentary entitled Kutluğ Ataman, directed by Metin Çavuş, focusing on Ataman’s artistic practice with fragments from his works, and commentaries by curators, critics, and the artist himself. The film is screened twice a day at 11:00am and 02:00pm on the ground floor.

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ARTER - Space for Art;İstiklal Caddesi No. 211 Beyoğlu; P:(0212) 243 37 67

Think of Holocaust films, and the first one that comes to mind is likely Spielberg’s award-winning Schindler’s List, a true story about the historical figure of Oskar Schindler, who saved over a thousand Jews from the death camps by claiming that he needed them to work in his munitions factory. Other stories of covert or overt resistance to the Nazis (by the Danish, for example), while less well-known than the deeds of Schindler, are still part of common discourse about the Holocaust.

But how many are aware that during the Second World War, Turkish diplomats in France and elsewhere saved the lives of tens of thousands of Jews by issuing them Turkish passports? This is the subject of a new documentary film entitled Turkish Passport, directed by Burak Arlıel and produced by Bahadır Arlıel and Güneş Çelikcan. The film, which received a warm reception at the Cannes Festival in May, will be released in cinemas in Turkey this week.

While the topic of the film might be similar in some respects to that of Schindler’s List, there are significant differences between the actions of Oskar Schindler and those of diplomats like Behiç Erkin (Turkey’s Ambassador to France), Necdet Kent (its Consul in Marseilles), Fikret Özdoğancı (its Vice Consul in Paris), and Selahattin Ülkümen (its Consul in Rhodes.) As the filmmakers have pointed out, given Turkey’s neutrality during WWII, there wasn’t always a need for subterfuge like Schindler’s in order to save Jews by diplomatic means. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that Kent and his colleagues put themselves in danger through their selfless actions. After Ülkümen successfully demanded the release of 42 Jews about to be deported from Rhodes, the Germans bombed the Turkish consulate there, killing Ülkümen’s wife.

Turkish Passport consists of interviews – with those saved by the Turks, with their relatives, and with the relatives of the diplomats who saved them – as well as reenacted scenes. The story it tells is a fascinating one. Under Behiç’s ambassadorship, the Turkish government claimed as its own any Jews who could show proof of Turkish ethnicity. Stereotypes about the heartlessness of modern bureaucracy go out the window as we watch these scenes explaining how French Jews of Turkish ancestry were able to obtain Turkish passports. It often sufficed to come to the Turkish consulate and recite a few phrases in Turkish (duly memorized beforehand) to qualify for this life-saving document. The Turkish government also evacuated Turkish passport-holders by train to Istanbul, a harrowing week-long journey through Axis-controlled (and Allied-bombed) territory that is well-captured by the film’s reenacted scenes.

In one incredible incident, Necdet Kent boards a train deporting Jews from Marseilles (bound for a concentration camp) and tells the Gestapo commander that he will accompany his fellow-citizens all the way to their final destination. The Germans stop the train at the next station and release Kent, his colleague, and all 81 Turkish Jews on board. Decades later, upon receiving the Üstün Hizmet Madalyası (Outstanding Service Medal) from the Turkish government in recognition of his wartime heroism, Kent is said to have remarked to his son, “It saddens me that I have received an award simply for doing my duty as a human being...look what humanity has come to.”

The inspiration for this project – which took years to make and involved extensive archival research in Turkey and abroad, as well as shooting in Turkey, Romania, and France – came when producer Güneş Çelikcan happened upon Behiç Erkin’s grave in Eskişehir. While the story told in Turkish Passport greatly redounds to the credit of Erkin and his diplomatic corps, the filmmakers have stressed that their story is a universal one, surpassing the confines of nationality or religion. Do not miss this fascinating new documentary, whose story deserves to be better known worldwide.

As explained by a panel at the entrance to the exhibit, Calle’s project was inspired by the ancient myth according to which the settlement of Chalcedon (now Kadıköy on the Asian side of Istanbul) was dubbed the “city of the blind,” due to its colonists’ failure to choose the more preferable site of Byzantium just across the Bosphorus.

The Last Image

The exhibit’s first section – expanded from a smaller, earlier project of Calle’s – contains photos of 13 people, employing a slightly differentapproach for each. Calle sometimes photographs the actual objects that comprise her interviewees’ “last image,” such as one man’s living room couch, or the Haydarpaşa train station with its famous clock. In other cases, Calle’s photos recreate memories that would otherwise be impossible to record: a text describing the last hours ofone woman'sfailing vision is accompanied by a blurred photo of a red bus on a city street.

One photo features a young boy who has been blind from birth. (Calle has stated that she was initially reluctant to includehim in the exhibit.) Rather than describing his last memory, pre-blindness, the boy tells of a dream he has had of driving on a long, straight road, in a “black car,” wearing “black sunglasses.” We are completely at a loss how to interpret his words. Are these visions real, or are they meaningless clichés obtained at second or even third hand?

Some of Calle’s subjects even act out the scenes they are narrating. A young shepherd, blinded in a hunting accident, demonstrates for the camera how he covered his eyes with his hands after being shot. A former taxi driver, shot in the eyes during a fight, tells his story with such an abundance of hand gestures that it is obvious – even from this small sample of photos – that he has lost none of his physical vivacity.

We too suffer from a kind of visual handicap, being unable to see into the eyes– and thusthe psyches–of Calle’s blindsubjects.We learn that the elderly woman mentioned above (whose last image was of a blurred red bus)lost the sight in her one healthy eye through a doctor’s error during a routine medical procedure.Calle photographs this woman with her right eye closed, and her left eye, with its prominent white,wide open. Her expression (reproach? resignation? tranquillity?)is as impossible for us to read as ours would be for her.

To See the Sea

The neurologist Oliver Sacks, in an essay from An Anthropologist on Mars entitled “To See or not to See,” describes the experiences of the formerly blind who have recovered their sight post-surgery. One might assume that a blind person regaining a lost or never-acquired power of sight would be overjoyed at this change. According to Sacks, it is not so simple: many of his patients end up confused and disoriented, as lives lived around the senses of hearing, touch, and smell must accommodate a new and completely unfamiliar method of perception.

So it is, tragically, with many of Calle’s subjects in the second part ofher exhibit. The first videoin "To See the Sea"is of a thin, middle-aged man wearing a blazer, standing on the beach withhis back to us. After several minutes, he finally turns around, his eyes still full of anger and suspicion – as though even the sea itself were a trick being played on him. A young man on crutches seems too boweddown withgrief even to register the natural wonder lying before him for the first time. Another man, thick-set, wearing a denim jacket, has tears in his eyes after turning to face the camera; the elderly hacı with beard and skullcap in the next video can barely hold back his own tears.

The ten people in these videos, shot by cinematographer Caroline Champetier, are all immigrants from Central and Eastern Turkey.By definition(given the criterion for their inclusion in the exhibit) all are living on the social and economic margins of Istanbul. Nonetheless, there is nothingpitying or condescending in Calle’s portrayal of her subjects, whose dignity remains intact before the camera. A young girl in one video idly fiddles in the water with her foot, seemingly indifferent to the camera’s presence, with the inscrutable expression of children. A middle-aged woman wearing a headscarf breaks into a wide grin after she turns around. The exhibit closes on a note of possible optimism, as a girl wearing a red sweater turns around, just the tiniest hint of a smile breaking through her shy expression.

Son Kez, İlk Kez is a wonderful discovery, as is the Sabancı Museum itself, located above the second Bosphorus bridge in the neighborhood of Emirgan. Those living in Istanbul, or planning to travel here before the year is up, should find time to visit the museum and see this thought-provoking exhibit.

The 12^th Istanbul Biennial came in much secrecy but it was totally worth the anxious wait. In the press opening, curators Jens Hoffmann and Adriano Pedrosa stated that the reason for the secrecy was to prevent pre-consumption of the artists and their works. This year, it was not only the secrecy that was new but also the decision in limiting the exhibition spaces. The show used to be scattered around the city, taking advantage of its intricate urban structure; however, this time around the curators chose to house the exhibitions in two large warehouses in Tophane, famously known as Antrepo 3 and Antrepo 5.

When: September 17–November 13

The Venue

Having cut down on the exhibition spaces, the curators commissioned the Office of Ryue Nishizawa to design the interior. The unique architecture clearly reflects some aspects of Istanbul. Rooms of different sizes leading one into passageways, shortcuts, and multiple rooms create distinct interior-exterior relationships. The architecture, thus, manages to create the city structure that it borrows from Istanbul, while adding a touch of Gonzales-Torres’s minimal and elegant approach to art.

The Concept

The Cuban American artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957–1996) is the point of departure of the 12^th Istanbul Biennial. Gonzalez-Torres was one of those artists who constantly demonstrated that the personal is political. As in previous years, the twelfth edition of the Biennial delves into the relationship between art and politics. There are both politically outspoken works, and formally innovative and curious art pieces. One of the refreshing aspects of the Biennial is its balanced use of diverse artistic mediums.

The Sections

The venue houses 5 group exhibitions and 50 solo shows. Each of the group exhibitions are marked by gray walls, occupying a room for each subdivision: Untitled (Death by Gun), Untitled (Ross), Untitled (History), Untitled (Passport), and Untitled (Abstraction). Marked by white walls, the solo shows are situated around the group exhibitions. All continents are represented in the show but there is a special focus on Latin America and the Middle East.

The Works

There are many historically crucial artworks at the Biennial. For instance, in the section Untitled (Death by Gun), there is Street Execution of a Viet Cong Prisoner taken in three frames by the American photojournalist Eddie Adams in 1968. As shocking and gruesome as they were, these photographs brought a much-needed discussion around the Vietnam War.

In the same section, Mat Collishaw’s Bullet Hole depicts a bullet hole in what appears to be the back of a head. In this extreme close-up, the photograph is divided over 15 panels that appear like stained glass pieces taken from a public building or perhaps a church.

In the section Untitled (History) Voluspa Jarpa’s work Library of No History draws attention with its simple presentation of books that contain declassified CIA documents about the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. The viewers are welcome to take a book on the condition that they write down on a form why they’re taking one. The title of the piece makes one think about what makes history, and the question goes beyond a simple “official versus alternative” take on historical accounts. The unquestionable objectivity and power of documents are also being explored through this piece. The dominance of the color gray suggests that these documents, which are supposedly holding the truth about a certain era, are far from conveying the complex socio-political effects of the dictatorship.

In the solo shows Marwa Arsanios’s installation All About Acapulco dives into her own family history in order to tell the story of Acapulco, a coastal site in south of Lebanon. Formerly a nice beach town, Acapulco changed its face after 1976 with the arrival of refugees who appropriated the beach clubs as their homes. Arsanios tries to trace the story of this urban transformation through her own family’s relationship to the beach town.

The third leg of the Biennial is Untitled (Abstraction), in which Theo Craveiro’s ant farm entitled Visible Idea presents a playful yet thought-provoking piece on systems of communicating an idea. The artist asks what kind of structures we need in order to communicate, or if we need any systems at all. Based on the grid structure of a well-known painting by Waldemar Cordeiro of the same title, the piece not only shows multiple systems working within each other but also brings up the question of whether we can exist beyond systems.

Linked to the same section, a solo exhibition by Adrian Esparza, Far and Wide, attract much attention with its visual simplicity and complex web of questions regarding, color, form, origin, and universality. In this piece, Esparza unravels a serape, a Mexican blanket, thus deconstructing it to its founding geometric shapes and colors. This way, the artist takes the blanket out of its traditional context, and turns into a universal human experience.

Untitled (Passport) explores the theme of borders as well as state control and oppression. It also draws attention to ideological constructions of natural phenomena. One such example is Kutluğ Ataman’s two-channel video piece Water. In this piece, a short section of the free flowing water of the Bosphorus is recorded at different times of the day and then edited into 5 different sections in both channels, creating horizontal grids on the screens. The piece makes reference to water politics, putting water within the limits of a screen to reflect upon state ideology.

Claire Fontaine, on the other hand, approaches the issue of borders from another perspective. The neon lights in Albanian, Turkish, Armenian, German, and Kurdish declare that there are “Foreigners Everywhere.” This references the issue of the xenophobia that has been heightened especially after the 9/11 attack, while also drawing attention to the fact that we are all foreigners at one point or another.

The last section of the Biennial is Untitled (Ross), which directly refers to Gonzales-Torres’s work about his partner Ross Laycock who died of AIDS in 1991, five years before the artist himself died of the same disease. This section mainly explores queer love and the notion of family, as well as problems regarding AIDS. In Jonathas de Andrades 2 in 1, two handsome Brazilian men wearing identical clothes are photographed in a series as they assemble two single beds into a double bed. The piece acts as a humorous manual encouraging and smoothing the union of two persons of the same sex. Many of the works in the group exhibition have erotic undertones and the materials used are from daily life, allowing the audience to access the works easily.

On the contrary, works on AIDS are dense and heavy, such as the one by the Ardmore Ceramic Art Studio, which uses ceramics as a tool to express the frustration and fear about AIDS both for patients and the people around them.

The Verdict

The biennial reaches far and wide in terms of time and geographies, and questions our most fundamental experiences as well as socio-political issues like state control, racism, and violence. This groundbreaking audiovisual world will draw you in with its ability to provoke, educate, and humor. You only need to pay attention as the works speak in various languages directly to your senses.

Lian and Ezgi are personal shoppers and fashion consultants. They also do freelance styling and give seminars on image and styling. After studying fashion design at Parsons School of Design, Lian worked at Vakko as the Couture Headbuyer. After finishing her studies in Management at Bilkent University, Ezgi studied fashion in Florence at the Polimoda Fashion School. She also worked for Vakko as the Product Manager of the Women’s Department, then as the Marketing Manager of Ipek Kıramer. Lian and Ezgi have a website called Luxury Shoppers where you can follow their style, buy their products, and contact them for their services.

The fifth Istanbul Fashion Week, which was held last week between September 7th and 10th, hosted alarge number of young Turkish designers as well as a small number of Turkish brands. Press members from Italy, Germany, Spain, and many other countries attended the shows to report back on what took place at IFW this year.

The week took off with a mixed show of İpek Arnas, Aslı Güler, and Jale Hürdoğan, and continued with the socially-responsible brand Argande’s show. The first day of IFW ended with the shows of Atıl Kutoğlu and well-known brand Tween, where Matt Dillon was among the audience. In addition to the tent set up in Tepebaşı in front of the TRT Building, some designers chose other locations for their shows. Gül Ağış’s show “Hammam Decadence” took place at the historical Galatasaray Hamam, while Mehtap Elaidi introduced “Istanbul Tılsımları,” her Spring/Summer 2012 collection that will be shown during Paris Fashion Week, at Spoil. Atıl Kutoğlu, Özgür Mansur, Cengiz Abazoğlu for adl, and Hakan Yıldırım for Koton were among the sought-after shows of the week.

Of the 22 fashion shows that took place over 4 days, Lian Kebudi and Ezgi Kıramer chose to attend the mixed show of the first day, Niyazi Erdoğan, Atıl Kutoğlu, Hakan Yıldırım for Koton, and Simay Bülbül.

Here is what they had to say about the fashion shows:

Mixed Show (İpek Arnas, Aslı Güler, and Jale Hürdoğan)

E+L: “The pieces in Jale Hürdoğan’s collection ‘Stigmatization’ were quite vamp and fierce. We thought that İpek Arnas’s innovative knitwear was fun. Aslı Güler’s collection was inspired by the girlie look of the 50s-60s and featured a lot of short, high-waisted skirts, colorful scarves, and raincoats.”

Niyazi Erdoğan

E+L: “We liked the unity between all the details within the collection and how they supported the concept. What first grabbed our attention were the color palette and the art deco prints on tshirts and shirts. We really liked the crocodile belts, sunglasses, jeans, and the details of the pants. With this collection, we can clearly see that Niyazi Erdoğan has grown and developed as a designer.”

Atıl Kutoğlu

E+L: “We found the men’s collection to be very fresh and new. We liked the color combinations, suit cuts, the combination of shorts and jackets, and portfolio bags. We were less impressed by the women’s collection as it was filled with striped caftans and patterns that we’re used to seeing from Atıl Kutoğlu. Yet, we really liked the grey and yellow striped fabrics as well as the day-time looks.”

Hakan Yıldırım for Koton

E+L: “This was one of our favorite shows. As always, Hakan Yıldırım created a chic collection of evening gowns. The color palette consisted of black, fuchsia, midnight blue, purple, and ecru. We really liked the high-heeled, pointy shoes as well as the details in the hair and make-up.”

Simay Bülbül

E+L: “Simay Bülbül is an expert when it comes to leather. We loved the zipper on the side in the short black dress—it’s punk but also chic. We loved both of the white dresses—they feature great leather work, and the contrast between the leather and chiffon is beautiful.”

Browse the photos above to see Ezgi and Lian’s picks, snapshots from the runway, and the style of the IFW audience.

Located on the same grounds as the Sakıp Sabancı Museum, Atlı Köşk is where the prestigious Sabancı family once lived. Now, the Sakıp Sabancı Museum is offering a rare opportunity for art enthusiasts and history buffs to tour the Atlı Köşk.

The tour, which is held every Saturday morning at 11:00am until September 24^th, covers the furniture and painting collections in the mansion as well as the sculptures around it.

The story of the mansion goes back to 1927, when Prince Mehmed Ali Hasan from the Mısır Hidiv familycommissioned the Italian architect Edouard De Nari to build a summerhouse for his family. In1950, Hacı Ömer Sabancı bought it off from Princess Iffet.

After the purchase, the first statue to be installed was Louis Doumas’s horse sculpture (1864) in front of the mansion, and since then, the mansion has been referred to as Atlı Köşk. In 1957, another horse sculpture would follow Doumas’s, and find its place by the entrance of the estate. This statue is an exact copy of one of the four bronze horses that were exhibited at the Sultanahmet Square (which was called the At Meydanı—or Horse Square—during the Ottoman Era) until 1204, and were pillaged during the fourth Crusade. These statues were then brought to Venice and installed in the world-famous Piazza San Marco. In addition to these widely-known horse sculptures, the estate houses many sculptures standing in various spots of the garden.

Hacı Ömer Sabancı had a special interest in paintings and furniture and he is said to have acquired most of the furniture in the mansion from the Asmali Mescit neighborhood, which, before the 1980s, used to be the center of furniture artisans. There is also a considerable amount of furniture purchased from overseas as well. Later, it was going to be Sakıp Sabancı to follow his father’s footsteps and make the Sabancı collection as wide and varied, from calligraphy to furniture, from archeological artifacts to paintings.

The tour of Atlı Köşk begins with a room in which personal items of Sakıp Sabancı are displayed. Agendas, caricatures gifted to him, a bust, and multiple awards decorate the walls and cabins in this room. The first short corridor exhibits a still life painting by Nikolai Kalmikof (1896-1951) who changed his name to Naci Kalmukoğlu upon becoming a Turkish citizen in 1936. After the Russian Revolution, the Kalmikof family migrated, first to Crimea and then to Istanbul. Freshly graduated from the Kharkov Fine Arts Academy, the 24 year-old Nikolai Kalmikof began his career by painting murals in movie theaters and chic apartment buildings, which stand to this day mainly in Nişantaşı (i.e. Sümer Apartment buildings.), Beyoğlu (i.e. Elhamra Cinema), and Kadıköy (i.e. Süreyya Cinema). Having had a classical arts education in Russia, he has assumed a more naturalist style in his works and he is best known for his striking nude paintings of gypsy girls.

The entrance hall welcomes guests with an impressive collection of paintings by Fausto Zonaro, who is said to have the biggest influence in developing Western style painting in the latest years of the Ottoman Era. One of the works hung in the entrance hall is the mysterious Young Girl with a Pumpkin, which is believed to be the only painting that Zonaro brought with him to Istanbul in 1891. The identity of the girl is unknown, although it is speculated that she was a former lover. In 1896, Zonaro became a court painter and gained fame with his realistic paintings. Best examples of this style are the Sun (allegedly, depicting the Caddebostan shore) and the Moon, which are displayed in the mansion on opposite walls facing each other.

The most striking feature of the first tearoom, which is designed to host guests who won’t be staying for dinner, is its rococo style and the dominance of warm colors accompanied by a heavy use of wood from floor to ceiling. There is a magnificent painting in this room depicting women in the harem trying to stay warm, holding their hands out on to astove. The identity of the painter is unknown; however, there are some speculations about the reflections of the man in the mirror in the painting. Some presume him to be the painter himself and some believe that he is the Harem Ağası (Chief harem eunuch or Master of the Girls). Since for a man to depict the harem so realistically is highly unlikely, the possibility of a woman painter to have created this piece still carries some weight. Next to it is another Zonaro painting, which bears little resemblance to his style because it is a commission work given with clear directions. The painting is a replica of the woman figure carding wool in Velasquez’spainting The Fable of Arachne. There are also two vases standing next to each other, which were commissioned by Napoleon himself to be sent to influential people as propaganda during his reign.

Across this room is another tearoom, directly connected to the dining hall, designed to host guests who are to stay for dinner. Here, you’ll see two portraits of young women painted by Sultan Abdülmecid. The styles of these paintings are different from one another, leading art historians to conclude that Abdülmecid didn’t have a style of his own but was constantly transitioning between various artists’ techniques. In fact, Abdülmecid was never able to form a unique style of his own because he remained confined in his art practice to the subjects and training he received in the palace.

On the adjacent wall is the only Republic Era painting in the mansion by Nazmi Ziya Güran. The artist, along with the likes of İbrahim Çallı, Avni Lifij, and Namık İsmail, belongs to a generation of Republic Era painters, who revolutionized Turkish contemporary art during the first half of the 20^th century. Nazmi Ziya’s style is the closest to impressionism, and in this landscape painting he produced in 1936, he depicts a river running through a town, trees, and some houses in the back. The smoke coming out of chimneys makes the only reference to humans.

Another painter who takes nature as the major source of inspiration is Ivan Aivazovsky, admired for his ability to play with light on waves and sea foam. Three seascape paintings of the artist crown this room on three separate walls. First depicts the sea under moonlight, the second under the sun, and the third is rather unusual with its imaginative quality in bringing together, rocks, trees, the sea, and the sun.

The dining room features a striking portrait by Pierre Desire Guillemet entitled Halayık (1873) depicting a female servant in the harem. Guillemet came to Istanbul upon the request of Sultan Abdülaziz, who admired Guillemet’s portrait of him and allowed him to stay as a court painter. It is probably due to his wife’s occupation as a teacher in the harem that Guillemet was able to portray an African woman residing in the harem so realistically.

Another intriguing painting in the dining hall is the rare example of a still life painting by Hüseyin Zekai Paşa, who is one of the first to employ Western style in his art practice. In this unusual still life, he depicts rotten and half eaten fruits among fresh ones. Although, still life paintings are usually hung in the dining rooms to show prosperity, this style also tries to convey the mortality that no living being can escape.

The small corridor exhibits portraits of sultans facing each other on opposite sides of the walls. These portraits are extremely important because they point to the transition from miniature style painting to Western portraiture, which is clearly demonstrated by the use of perspective and the bodily postures of sultans. Written below each sultan’s portrait are their accomplishments and drawings of keys that hint to the prosperity of that particular sultan’s time. The portraits end with the tuğra (calligraphic signature) of Sultan Abdülaziz on the connecting wall.

This completes the tour of the first floor and the tour guide encourages the viewers to see the world-famous calligraphy collection on the second floor where you’ll see examples of works produced in a span of 500 years. The collection includes rare manuscripts of the Qur’an, albums, panels, and decrees, and also tools used in the creation of this artistic style. There are even a few calligraphy works carved on wood, which used to belong to the Bektashi and other Sufi orders. This calligraphy collection was exhibited at many international institutions, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Louvre Museum in Paris, and Arthur M. Sackler Museum in Cambridge (part of the Harvard Art Museums).

The tour is held at 01:00pm on Saturdays only, until the end of September (except on September 3^rd). Students from the Sabancı University give this tour in Turkish free of charge (you only need to pay the museum entrance fee, which is 10 TL for adults and 7TL for students). Upon finishing the tour, a walk around the garden filled with many more sculptures and artifacts, followed by a scenic lunch at Müzedechanga would make a fulfilling and pleasant Saturday afternoon for curious, art-loving urbanites.

There’s something particularly enticing about an indefinable medium, an infinite study. Contemporary art delves into such a territory, and the end is nowhere near—nonbelievers might think that the boundaries of artistic creativity are near reach, but five exhibitions are here to show Istanbulites that there is no such thing. Intertwining important aspects of Turkish history and culture within exhibitions that are raw, ingenious, and unique, the five summer exhibitions serve as fantastic stops for art lovers. Whether you wish to see a traditional example of painting or an unconventional installation, there is an exhibition in the city catering to your interests. Grab your walking shoes and maybe even a sketchpad for an on-the-spot wave of inspiration.

5 Person Bufetat Arter

On display until August 21st, 5 Person Bufet, curated by Emre Baykal, is the first solo exhibition of Deniz Gül whose practice explores the tension and transitivity between the inside and the outside—public and private spheres, home and society, individual and collective psyches. In a way, the artist is turning the insides out and showing us how much of the codes and norms that belong to the public sphere permeate through the make-up of what is deemed as individuality.

The installation is part of a multi-phase project, which started out with a text written by the artist who envisioned ending it with a musical performance composed specifically for this project. The installation itself includes 5 pieces of furniture: a Vitrine, Closet, Safe, Coffin, and Door, which are turned into a room in a rather unusual format. The pieces of furniture are lined up in a row, resembling columns or monuments, and they are able to hold one person. Each object acts like a threshold that challenges what each individual regards as inside and outside. It is possible that the artist suggests that there is no outside, but only spaces to hide in, escape, or go further inside.

This feeling of the interior is reinforced by a smart intervention with the glass windows of the exhibition space. The artist has chosen to apply cut glass motifs of crystal ashtrays, sugar bowls, and glass-sets, which have been quite popularly displayed in the vitrines of Turkish homes since the 80s. The light that is refracted by these objects surrounds the room. In a way, the artist contains the viewer in a fragile shell made up of what we display as our valuables. Deniz Gül unpacks the workings of soft power that seep through the holes between what we call inside and outside. It is a solitary journey to see how the multiple systems that work within and outside of us get so deep and complex.

Humanat The Empire Project

The second exhibition of the brand new The Empire Project is the photography exhibition, Human, featuring the works of 6 photographers: Rasha Kahil, Halil Koyutürk, Sean Lee, Manolo Menéndez, Gözde Türkkan, and Gökşin Varan.

According to the exhibition’s statement, “In the end we are alone. Cold. Abandoned in a giant social collective. Solitary, naked little individuals, sharing one common denominator: we are Human.” In line with this statement, the selection of photos attempts to unfold various human conditions: vulnerable, lonely, exposed.

Each photo in the exhibition is provoking and eye-catching, some more than others. Rasha Kahil’s works, for instance, are intimate, plain, and piercing. Sean Lee’s pieces are moody and intense. All the artists have their distinct yet complementary styles. Some might consider the photos bordering on the pornographic side. In any case, the Human exhibition, which is on until August 27th, is an opportunity to see examples of various styles in photography that mix fiction with reality.

20 Modern Turkish Artists of the 20th Century at santralistanbul

It is a rare opportunity to walk through the history of modern Turkish art, its pillars and influences across decades and geographies.

The exhibition, curated by the internationally-acclaimed writer, publisher, and artist Ferit Edgu, is divided into three parts in the Main Gallery according to artistic styles and influences. The section on the first floor is called Geometry, Light, Music and Walls in which works by İlhan Koman, Ferruh Başağa, Adnan Çoker, Burhan Doğançay, and Koray Ariş are on display. In this section, the viewer may feel another level of admiration for the profoundness and artisanship in connecting mathematics, philosophy, and art; especially the sculptures are inspirational and moving. The second floor features the Paris School-Turkish Abstract Painters, which encompass the works of Fahrelnissa Zeid, Hakkı Anlı, Selim Turan, Nejad Devrim, Mübin Orhon, and Albert Bitran. Last but not least, Two Generation of Figurative Paintings featuring Yüksel Arslan, Mehmet Güleryüz, Komet, Ergin İnan, Ömer Uluç, Abidin Dino, Avni Arbaş, Alaettin Aksoy, and Fikret Muallâ is displayed on the third floor.

The entrancefloorof the exhibition features Ara Güler’s portrait photographs of these 20 artists who are some of the great masters of Turkish art. As loud as each piece is, they silently sit side-by-side forming a comprehensive picture of the history of 20^th century Turkish art. To walk through the different sections of the exhibition, featuring 400 paintings and sculptures, almost feels like walking through time in a multi-faceted platform. Needless to say, this is a rare opportunity to see a rich archive of the most prominent artists that came out of this land.

The exhibition was scheduled to end by the end of June; however, due to public demand, the exhibition is extended until July 31st.

On the Territory: Contemporary Art in Colombiaat santralistanbul

While you are at santralistanbul, you must also pay a visit to the smaller exhibition dedicated to young Colombian artists curated by Jaime Céronat Gallery 1. On view until August 11th, the exhibition entitledOn the Territory: Contemporary Art in Colombiafeatures the works of artists from a country that has seen much turmoil in its recent past. The show is complementary to the exhibition in the Main Gallery in its comprehensive picture of the type of art and artistic practice that has risen in Colombia. The viewer cannot ignore the comparative and contrasting aspect that this show offers. To see the resemblances and differences between the context of Turkey and Colombia, in terms of the artists’ interests and styles, their take on the political and social atmosphere in their country and the world, is interesting.

Borders Orbits 10 at Siemens Sanat

The Borders Orbits Competition, organized by Siemens Sanat for the tenth time, features the works of seven young artists, whose practices focuson the fluidity of identities rather than a homogenous and fixated identity problem. All the winning artists propose that this fluidity is the zeitgeist, “the spirit of the times” of contemporary visual culture.

On display are video works by Güler Aşık and Sibel Ay, monumental canvases by Hüseyin Arıcı, photos by Rabia Öner, figure-images by N. Güneş Güven, the metaphorical plastic sign “Communication Network” by Zeynep Gürler, and paintings by Faruk Yigen. The Borders Orbits 10 exhibition can be visited at Siemens Sanat until July 31st.

As you’re walking down Istiklal Street, you may be taken aback by the sight of two scooters (transmogrified into deers) behind a glass window, one with a pair of antlers made of rear-view mirrors, affectionately holding and tending the other. These peculiar “lovers” created by Patricia Piccinini do not only raise curiosity but also lure one in for an adventurous walk around the alternative universe that the artist has built. Entitled Hold Me Close to Your Heart, this astonishing body of work, which includes works of sculpture, painting, video and sound installations, and digital prints, is on display at Arter until August 21.

The first piece The Lovers greets the viewer at the entrance floor where works made out of motor parts and panels with auto paint and fine finishing are displayed. The second work,The Observer, reflects Piccinini’s observant look at the world of commodities. In this piece, a young boy is tipped over a stack of Ikea chairs and is looking down at us, at the world. The viewer gets the impression that it might be unsafe for him to be up there; however, in a way, he looks finely settled as well. Throughout the entrance floor, Piccinini warms up the viewer to her strange and highly-imaginative world that dives deep into the complexities of the high-tech world we inhabit.

The diversity of materials and mediums continue up on the second and third floors of Arter. In this site-specific exhibition, Piccinini arranged for each floor to carry a unique atmosphere. The viewer observes a stark change as they go up to the dimly-lit room of the second floor, where strange creatures seem to be in close emotional and physical contact with human beings. This closeness intensifies as the viewer steps foot onto the third floor, carefully staged to appear as someone’s home. It’s as if the viewer tiptoes around the tranquility of a house in which creatures of all sorts live together. Just when we have had enough of the endless “nature versus culture” debate, with its doomsday scenarios and portrayals of scientists playing God, the body of works on each floor urges us to tackle with issues surrounding nature, wilderness, artificiality, bioethics, beauty, and techno/cultural productions.

Piccinini is patient in taking us into her alternative universe, in which she seeks no answers but is curious about the mutability of beings of any kind—real or imaginary—and the blurry terrain where all things natural and artificial reside. She does not give any credit to apocalyptic cries nor does she fall for a science that is or will be the answer to the problems of human kind. She rather sees the possibilities and unpredictability of scientific creation, along with the problems that (may) arise from those creations. She is more concerned about our stance towards undesirable outcomes. Science is far from being perfect and it is time that we question how we, humans, will deal with both the successful and disappointing outcomes of our experiments. In a way, she wants the viewer to reconsider their attitudes towards Frankenstein or the Elephant Man, both of whom, as the stories go, have experienced great misery as a result of human negligence and obsession with beauty.

Pointing to the ethical issues that surround our “creations”—and we should take this as general as possible—Piccinini takes her practice one step further and challenges her viewers to empathize with hideous creatures that mostly only exist through her artistic production. Piccinini’s weird creatures and humans live together, holding each other, and nursing one another. This suggests that Piccinini is hopeful about a future in which humans, who are inclined to see themselves as the supreme species, will be co-existing with creatures of different origins—ones that have mutated or others that have come as a result of biotechnological endeavors.

In her work Doubting Thomas (2006), for instance, the viewer finds a boy around the age of eight, curiously but hesitantly touching the mouth of a creature that Piccinini has created. The artist portrays a child that tries to discover and make a connection with a species that has no resemblance to him whatsoever. In many of her works, the viewer will find that she uses figures of children, and this might be due to the high level of intuitive awareness that children have. Perhaps, Piccinini also aims to show that, despite the vulnerability of children, there is no harm in furry creatures playing with kids. It might be the case that these creatures are as vulnerable as we are, if not more.

Rarely, the artist creates sculptures of real creatures, as in the blobfish depicted in her work Eulogy (2011). The blobfish, unknown to most, lives deep in the southern seas of Australia and yet faces the danger of extinction due to reckless crab fishing. In Eulogy, an ordinary man holds a blobfish in his hand with a bitter look on his face, sharing its last moments. He is not histrionic; he only wants to give it the attention it deserves. Through this work, the artist asks questions as simple as this: Do we only care for what is useful to us or at least pleasing to our eyes? How can we justify this ignorance and indifference towards the blobfish and the likes? Eulogy is about personal redemption as well as about being more aware of problems that we, humans, create for the sake of finding and generating resources for ourselves.

The uncanny quality of each piece is undeniable; however, for some odd reason the viewer is never actually scared, and possibly not even repulsed. Piccinini’s creations are not meant to be threatening at all. The artist somehow manages to minimize the repulsion one might feel, and this way, she adds another layer of challenge for the viewer, urging them to question the cause of their reaction towards her creations. This finely balanced element in Piccinini’s work—the amicable quality of creatures, which might have looked threatening in someone else’s hands—is what builds the spine of her artistic practice. What might be considered ugly and, therefore, threatening and unnecessary, becomes an ordinary part of life, no longer ugly but benevolent and accepted as is. In creating an unusual universe, Piccinini takes our imagination beyond the boundaries of our limited understanding and urges us to question how we instinctually, socially, and politically position ourselves as individuals and as species in the world.

As the first one in the series, Öğüt’s piece is promising, showing strong wit and character, while offering an unsettling insight into the relationship between modernization and the middle class in Turkey. In his art practice, the internationally-acclaimed artist explores how people struggle against restricted freedoms on a daily basis. Öğüt constantly analyzes and deconstructs the meaning of certain objects and materials in the public psyche, such as coal, shovel, diamond, cars, and asphalt, which do more than just make life easier and/or worthy for people. They hold great significance and trigger many associations in the collective mind of individuals, whose lives intersect with the political sphere every day via subtle encounters. Öğüt carefully unpacks the meanings latent in each, and turns them into humorous yet profound art pieces. The work featured at SALT is another playful response of Öğüt’s in which the artistturns an ordinary car made in the 1970s into a strong metaphor for Turkey’s recent history.

The work presents a “middle-class dream,” once symbolized by Murat 131, the Turkish version of the Italian automobile Fiat 131 (also called Mirafiori), which was being manufactured in Tofaş’s factory in Turkey in the 1970s. The car on display is actually two Murat 131 cars merged to extend their length and seem like a limo version. The car’s bottom sits on a slope constructed precisely for the purpose of suspending its wheels in mid-air, creating a feeling of unease as well as marvel for the viewer. Öğüt’s version of a jet-black Murat 131 demonstrates an unstable and incomplete dream that begs for a re-evaluation of a top-down civilization/Westernization project, most explicit in clothing styles, technological products, and architectural constructions seen all around Turkey. This way, the artist first aims to question a certain understanding of progress. On an elemental level, the precariousness of the situation lies in the impossibility of becoming “modern” simply by driving certain “dream” cars. There is also the problem of defining what is culturally and socially modern.

In this work, Öğüt suggests that any imposed change offers hope; however, if the grounding is not solid, it leaves one in the lurch just like the car that made it to the peak of the slope and then got stuck. Although the complexities of the issue are extensive, this modified vehicle on the slope seems to embody most aspects of it and render them tangible.

Across the Slopewas first showcased at the Centre d’Art Santa Mònica in Barcelona in 2008. The artwork manages to speak to a wide international audience as these cars were manufactured and used around the world in Italy, Spain, Poland, France, North Africa, Southeast Asia, and some parts of South America. Each manufacturer produced the Mirafiori with certain local specifications, and also adopted local names to appeal to its market. However, the modification of the Mirafiori does not stop at the national level but continue through to individual customization endeavors. Therefore, the car on display not only refers to the particular point in history that it was made in and the nationalization attempts, but also ponders upon the idea of customization. Hence, Öğüt delves right into the area where the personal meets higher socio-political and economic endeavors.

In Turkey, the process of car modification is both revered and insulted, depending on the social class one speaks from. For quite a long time, it was popular to modify certain cars to make them look like another. Especially the middle-class car models known as the “bird” series—Doğan (falcon), Şahin (hawk), and Serçe (canary)—would be the subject of such customization. A Şahin model car with a Doğan appearance, for instance, was far more in style than the original Doğan. This practice hints at a middle-class that builds various layers in its structure and appearance, constantly reinventing itself within certain limits. The customization is also a great play with top down changes at large. By creating his own version of Murat 131, Öğüt turns the modernization process inside out, making solid references to characterizations of social classes in Turkey in light of certain ambigious modernization projects orchestrated by the state.

Although, not part of the original installation, posters taken from architect Tanju Kaner’s personal archive are hung on the wall right at the entrance of SALT on Istiklal Street. These posters aim to attract pedestrians, who are likely to be familiar with the already cult car model Murat 131. The posters and the automobile itself create a certain feeling of nostalgia, since Murat 131 created a big buzz at the time, as it was the first car that middle class citizens in Turkey were able to afford. On the posters, the viewer finds both advertisements of the70s and individual comments made about this brand new car introduced to the lower strata of society. Much of the advertisements focus on why Murat 131 is the ideal car for certain types of families, focusing on various qualities from gas consumption to the number of persons it can carry.

From the conceptualization to the realization of the work, Across the Slope offers a gateway into thinking more intensely about a modernization process that has been dragging on for a long time in various parts of the world. Also, by adopting a certain distance from its subject, due to its temporal setting, Öğüt makes a humorous approach possible.

Regardless of how Modern Essays will continue, the kickoff with Across the Slope is yet to inspire and be subject to lively discussions.

The show will be on display until October 1, and will be accompanied by a video program in SALT Beyoğlu’sWalk-in Cinema on the entrance floor, presenting various readings of the installation. Check out www.saltonline.org in the upcoming days to see the schedule of the video program.

The International Istanbul Jazz Festival is not only a world-class series of concerts by some of the biggest names in jazz, it’s also spread out all over town, giving jazz lovers a chance to see the city from a myriad of angles.

The 2011 Istanbul Jazz Fest, which runs from July 1^st to the 19^th, has been officially dubbed “Jazz-Hearted Istanbul” by the Istanbul Culture and Art Foundation (IKSV). It is advertised with a logo of a heart sprouting instruments, implying that Istanbul’s heart beats to the sound of jazz, or that if you placed an enormous stethoscope on the city’s heart, you would hear the sounds of jazz. Well, in a sense that’s true — once a year. If you’re lucky enough to be here at the right time and can handle the heat, you’ll see that it really does. However, the metaphor of the heart doesn’t cover the half of it.

Forty concerts will be held, branching out from the more traditional Cemil Topuzlu Open Air Theatre (ground zero for many years) to newer hotspots like the Istanbul Modern, the Marmara Esma Sultan, santralistanbul, and historical wonders in the old city like Hagia Eirene Museum and the venerable, often overlooked Archaeological Museum. In total, 25 different venues have been chosen for gigs, so the heart of the city will be pumping a life-affirming jazz vibe through the arteries and veins of the urban landscape, creating a jazz aficionado’s equivalent of an enlivening pub crawl. After growing intoxicated off the music at one spot, you can move on to another with a completely different vibe and environment the next day, getting a fascinating tour of the city in the process. There will even be the so-called festival within the festival, which started last year. The organizers call this the “Tünel Feast”, and it will literally spill out into the streets and other spaces on July 2^nd. Expect workshops, special exhibitions, and unexpected performances to enliven Beyoğlu, Şişhane, Galata, and Asmalımescit (Istanbul’s Greenwich Village or Shoreditch), and less impromptu concerts on purpose-built stages in the Tünel and Galata squares.

Of course, this festival, focused on jazz, has long included other musicians that would never appear in your iTunes’s jazz genre list. From Patti Smith to Sting to Lou Reed to Jane Birkin, it’s been eclectic fare for years, so there’s always been something for everyone, whether you’re happy with the mainstream or prefer hipster fare. This is not an event restricted to jazz fans and connoisseurs only, which is not to say that jazz aficionados have nothing to be excited about. It would require many pages to give a definitive description of the more than 300 visiting and local artists participating in the festival, but some of the more notable acts to catch deserve some mention.

Herbie Hancock, Marcus Miller, and Wayne Shorter’s world premier performance of “Tribute to Miles” is a must-see. The complete group includes Hancock (piano), Shorter (sax), Miller (bass and bass clarinet), Sean Jones (trumpet), and Sean Rickman (drums). Hancock, one of the first jazzmen to introduce synthesizers and funk, not to mention hip-hop scratching on the seminal single “Rockit”, needs no introduction. Nor does multi-instrumentalist Miller, primarily known as a bassist who worked with Miles Davis, or jazz’s arguably greatest composer, Shorter, a formidable saxophonist who also worked with Miles, Art Blakey, and Weather Report. Snatch a ticket for this one before they’re all gone.

“Sing the Truth”, a unique project featuring the inimitable voices of Angelique Kidjo, Dianne Reeves, and Lizz Wright, will also be a showstopper. A homage to female vocalists as diverse as the late Miriam Makeba, Aretha Franklin, Tracy Chapman, and Lauryn Hill, this performance is sure to bring down the house. With Africa’s foremost diva, Kidjo, alongside Reeves, the four-time winner for “Best Jazz Vocal Performer”, and Wright, who seamlessly blends jazz, pop, and folk, this is bound to be an unforgettable night.

If you like your jazz seasoned with the pop and R&B and backed up by world-renowned piano, then be sure to check out the show of nine-Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Natalie Cole. She’ll be sharing the stage with Randy Crawford, much admired in Europe for her versatile vocal style,and jazz-meets-soul outfit “The Crusaders” bandleader Joe Sample on piano.

Moving on from these mostly American jazz luminaries, who will appear at Cemil Topuzlu Open Air Theatre, and in keeping with the multi-cultural, genre-bending ethos, you can also catch Paul Simon’s first show in Istanbul, or dig the “World Stars from Mali”, an event that promises Syrian violins, sitars, Indian tabla, and rock guitars. Or take in what is being billed as one of the most interesting events this year: “A Strange Place for Jazz”. The name riffs off the name of the trio e.s.t.’s album “A Strange Place for Snow” and is dedicated to the band’s late founder, Esbjörn Svensson. For those of you who have become increasingly bored with the American jazz scene and thrilled by the new Nordic Jazz that has emerged over the past decade, this will be a welcome addition to the festival.

A real draw this year for the more adventurous, passionate music lover is the array of exciting venues where the performances will take place. The aforementioned IKSV web site provides Google maps with a few simple clicks (pics included), and with printed-out map or smart phone in hand, no one should have any trouble reaching the gigs. For those who prefer not to travel farther afield, most of the biggest names will remain at the easy-to-locate open air theater in Harbiye, but for a night of master percussionists (Zakir Hussain among them), why not visit the old city and the 4^th-century Hagia Eirene Museum just inside Topkapi Palace grounds? The only Byzantine church to retain its atrium, it is usually reserved for classical music events. The acoustics are awe-inspiring, and make this worth the trip.

Make a day of it and include the often overlooked, stately Archaeology Museum, a stone’s throw from Hagia Eirene. Visit the museum’s tranquil tea garden for a breather after you’ve taken in enough Hellenic, Egyptian, and Roman artefacts. Scope it out, then retrace your steps for The Duwala Malambo Project, which features Richard Bona, Raul Midon, and Grammy-winning producer Arif Mardin making a stew of world music, folk, jazz, soul, and blues –phew! Feel like a trip to picturesque seaside Ortaköy? Enjoy the fish restaurants there, have a look at the iconic view of the mosque in the shadow of the Bosphorus Bridge, and then catch the aforementioned “World Stars from Mali” show in the evening. It will be held at the Esma Sultan venue, a onetime Ottoman mansion transformed into an atmospheric site for concerts. If you feel like traveling up the Bosphorus and inland, you’ll even find a show at an upmarket department store complex in Istiniye.

If that’s not your scene, stick to the seaside and head back down the Bosphorus to the Istanbul Modern, Istanbul’s impressive answer to New York’s MOMA, and part of the gentrification or renaissance of the entire Beyoğlu district. Sitting in the café with its incomparable view is almost as enjoyable as the art on exhibit, and the museum will play host to one of the festival’s most innovative upcoming artists, Patrick Wolf. Expect a mix of electronica, plunderphonics, his trademark classical viola, piano, and – what else? – ukulele. If museums turn you off, head inland to Şişhane and check out the IKSV’s own pristine, brand new club, Salon. It’s a short wander down the hill from Tünel Square, where the nostalgic tram terminates, and the stately Beyoğlu municipal headquarters, easily accessible by metro. This is your chance to see a collaboration between Turkish composer and bassist Alp Ersönmez and Bugge Wesseltofft, the prolific Norwegian jazzman, as part of the festival’s “European Club” series.

A dérive is "a mode of experimental behavior linked to the conditions of urban society: a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances" concocted by the French Situationists, as any art student or museum curator will tell you. Rather than a music festival alone, the 18^th IKSV Jazz Festival promises both sound unbound and a musical dérive. Call it an odyssey if you prefer. After all, this was once Homer’s part of the world. If the above venues are not enough for you, there are two on the Golden Horn, on the side of the Horn that faces the old city. One is santralistanbul, a post-industrial island of calm in the middle of hectic Istanbul and home to two museums, trendy cafés, performance spaces, and one of the Bilgi University campuses. The concerts will be held outside in an amphitheater, and promise to be magical: the water and scenic background will serve as a backdrop to the stage. Musicians will also take the stage in a recently renovated historical shipyard. Can you guess which concert will be held in the shipyard? Yep, that’s right: “A Strange Place for Jazz”.

As free-jazz exponent Ornette Coleman put it in the liner notes of his album, Change of the Century, “Many people don’t trust their reactions to music or art unless there is a verbal explanation for it…the only thing that really matters is whether you feel it or not.” It’s not my place to “intellectualize…or reduce analytically” the music for you. Get out there and feel it for yourself – and enjoy both the musical and the urbanjourneys.

Tickets are available at BILETIX sales points or www.biletix.com.tr. You can also go directly to the İKSV building(Nejat Eczacıbaşı Binası, Sadi Konuralp Cad. No: 5 Şişhane)

Ticket prices for the 18th Istanbul Jazz Festival range between 15TL and 350TL. Credit cards will be accepted in all purchases.

Naive Colorscapes

A rare figure in the history of Turkish modern art, İhsan Cemal Karaburçak is a naive artist who managed to stand against the conventions of the era in which he lived and to create an oeuvre that is unmistakably characteristic and unique.

Born in 1898 in Istanbul, İhsan Cemal grew up in the bleak years of the two world wars. He studied to become a civil servant at the Directorate of Telegraph Services in Ankara, with a mission to build telegraph poles all over Anatolia. As he climbed up the career ladder at his office, he was transferred to a post in Paris, where he decided to take up painting. It was there in 1930 that he signed up for a drawing class at the prestigious École Universelle. However, he soon quit as he became disillusioned with the conventional methods the school tried to impose on him. He wanted to intentionally ignore the rules of classical perspective, just like Cézanne had done at the turn of the 20th century, and set out to explore the modernist school of thought on his own. He kept on painting and in the 1950s opened an art gallery in Ankara and published his musings on art as pamphlets. He also exhibited regularly in Turkey and abroad, becoming a well-known artist who was celebrated for his distinctive style.

As you enter the show at the Pera Museum’s fifth floor, you will immediately notice his style and use of color, with the abundance of color in the small canvases hung all around the gallery. İhsan Cemal’s portraits, still lifes, landscapes, cityscapes, and later abstractions all focus on certain colors, such as the combination of orange and green, and the ever dominant dark purple, inspired by Ankara’s clear nightfalls and admittedly reflecting the painter’s moody temperament: “I am a painter of color. Since the sun kills all the colors, I may be inclined to like nature more when it grows dark -when clouds accumulate, or the earth, the trees, and the buildings are bathed in rain, allowing colors to emerge. I must be selecting dark shades for I am charmed by the lights drifting through or the illumination that appears underneath. Perhaps it is a question of a pessimistic or melancholic disposition or nature, who knows? Yet, whatever the reasons may be, since I attain satisfactory results and create art for art’s sake, I am happy with my art, and by extension, with my life.”

It is interesting to witness İhsan Cemal’s progress, from his early flower still lifes to semi-abstracted cityscapes and finally to complete abstractions, filled with the traces of imagery from previous figurative periods. In this transformed pictorial language of his later years, he abandons perspective and aims to paint “a two-dimensional picture on a two-dimensional canvas.” Reminiscent of Klee’s color blocks, İhsan Cemal creates his signature untitled paintings that feature basic shapes to replace his earlier favorite figures: rectangular blocks as houses, circles as trees, Ts as telegraph poles, Cs as curving streets and several colored suns and moons. Considering his profession, the experts speak of instances of Morse code embedded within his canvases but what the artist meant by the little dots of color on the pictorial surface remains a mystery.

Unexpected Aesthetics of Neuroscience

The third floor of the Pera Museum hosts an interesting show put together by the Director of New York’s Schools of Visual Art Suzanne Anker. A digital artist herself, Anker brought together six leading artists who incorporate scientific methods with different media in the visual arts. Leonel Moura, Michael Rees, Michael Joaquin Grey, Andrew Carnie, Rona Pondick, and Frank Gillette have all worked with new technologies ranging from robotics, 3-D scanning, Photoshop, rapid prototyping, microscopy, and computational video.

Walking around the airy white gallery space of the museum’s third floor made me feel as if I was in a science fiction movie, possibly in the art gallery of an alien spaceship. A circular robot with wheels and a blackboard marker buzzed around inside an open display cabinet, writing words on a stack of white drawing paper. Eerie hydra-like parachutes hung from the ceiling and small, clear sculptures that look like molecular bodies sat comfortably on white pedestals. A giant, silvery skull smiled at me from inside a large photograph on the wall.

At the press conference, Anker based the starting point of the exhibiton on the theory of metaphors by linguist Beorge Lakoff. A professor at the University of California-Berkeley since the 1970s, Lakoff has argued that metaphors are not linguistic but conceptual constructions, and are central to the development of thought. By approaching art, thinking about and interacting with art, we construct certain metaphors in our minds and this actually affects our nervous system in a very physical way. I was very much surprised to find out that recent research shows the evolution of the human brain began with the discovery of figurative sculpture. This means that as we continue to read, write, think, and create, we increase our potential to be smarter and more creative.

This theory is illustrated in the show by Andrew Carnie’s wonderful slide-show installation titled ‘Magic Forest’ (1992). Set in a dark backroom at a not-so-convenient corner of the gallery, the slide-show begins with an image of a skull. A growing brain inside the skull produces an increasing number of neurons and tree-like structures of different colors and shapes. The colors come from the flourescent dyes used in the analysis of the brain tissue under a laser confocal microscope. The neurons, projected over several layers of tulle, create a feeling of depth and an unexpected state of tranquility in the viewer. Who would have thought looking at images of brain activity would be so mesmerizing?

Here, it is impossible to miss the “Tree of Life” imagery in the nervous system. Perhaps this is why New York artist Rona Pondick put her own head as the single fruit of a steel tree that resembles a neuron. Described as “an alchemical forest” by curator Joe Houston, Pondick’s half-human, half-plant trees are a metaphor for growth, both physical and personal.

Michael Rees, a conceptual artist focusing on rapid prototyping technology, is exhibiting his latest Ajna sculptures. This is a remarkable series in which he combines skulls with uteri and vertebrae among other internal organs. Almost recreating the mythological ‘uroboros’, the image of a serpent eating its own tail, Rees makes an allusion to the notion of death and rebirth with this series. In a book called ‘Information arts: intersections of art, science, and technology’ by Stephen Wilson, Rees uses this unique technology to create these organic-looking resin sculptures. He compares this technology to “what the medieval alchemists call the Albedo state, the silvery mercurial state where one thing can reflect or become another as easily as not.” The prototyped resin gives the sculptures a tactile quality, which suggests the possibility of growing or reconstructing real body organs with the latest advances in technology.

Moving away from biology on to artificial intelligence, the most playful work on the show is definitely Leonel Moura’s ‘artbot’ ISU Poetics. Named after the Romanian poet Isidore Isou, the founder of the Dadaist Arts movement Lettrism (a movement where the letter is basis of a new art form), ISU is a fascinating four-wheeled robot, which can draw letters and make words to create pictorial compositions. As the robot moves around writing his poetry comprised of simple words, Mr. Moura explains to me that there is no single algorhythm to tell ISU what to do. ISU reacts to color. The color of drawing on a sheet of paper is picked up by its sensors and it makes its own decisions to draw or to stop – unless led on by a stimulus. Moura managed to have ISU draw a human figure by placing it on a clear plexiglass panel with the same drawing. While the artbot struggled with the contours of the figure at the beginning, in time it became quite proficient. The three drawings on the wall prove that the resulting image is in fact more than satisfactory. Later that week, Moura took on a bolder position in his Istanbul Manifesto performance at Galata Perform by saying, “Marcel Duchamp’s idea was to make art with the already made. Our idea is to make art that makes art. […] The great artist of tomorrow will not be human.” Perhaps this may be true. Just as we know that we can see brain activity or move a cursor on a computer with our eyes, what seems like science fiction now may become reality. But still the fact remains that pondering about human nature has allowed scientists and artists alike to get to where we are now.

Summer season in the arts scene began with many new exhibitions, some continuing until fall, and others introducing rising artists and featuring works in support of a certain cause for a short time. Two great examples of the latter case are “Cabinet of Curiosities” by Burçak Bingöl and “Tradition Now” by Günseli Kato. Both exhibitions are significant endeavors in re-thinking traditional arts—ceramic and miniature—and adding them to the visual universe of contemporary art.

“Cabinet of Curiosities” (Nadireler Kabinesi) is taking place at CDA Projects on the second floor of Mısır Apartmanı until 15 June. The title of the exhibition references a tradition in Renaissance Europe, when a cabinet referred to a room (rather than a piece of furniture) in which uncategorizable objects were collected. More rudimentary forms of this cabinet existed before the sixteenth century; however, it became popular during the sixteenth century as many monarchs took up the hobby of forming large collections of “things.” In “Cabinet of Curiosities,” inspired by this phenomenon, Bingöl creates her own cabinet of curiosities in which she features her own valuables: her ideas and feelings expressed through ceramic.

The first piece that grabs one’s attention at Bingöl’s exhibition is a ceramic table and chair at the end of the exhibition hall that appears to be standing on tenterhooks. As implied by the title “Daydreamer,” the work evokes the feeling that this space is quite fragile, just like the artist’s perception of her working environment—a table and chair where she cooks up her ideas. To the left of this work, there is a room half covered with floral wallpaper. Four shelves stand next to each other on the wall, each carrying an ordinary object, such as a plastic cup and a small gas bottle used in almost every house. Everything featured on this wall is covered with the same floral wallpaper, hidden in the artificial garden constructed by the artist.

In fact, throughout the exhibition, floral patterns dominate Bingöl’s objects. In every room, we find a camera made out of ceramic mounted on the wall and covered with floral designs. The artist clearly wants to remind us that we are constantly monitored by various agents/objects that have become ordinary and, thus, obscure, blending in with our immediate environment. Yet, this work suggests more than that: it reflects on our own systems of thinking in which we constantly monitor ourselves, and watch our words and moves.

One other interest of the artist is systems of production. In the next room of the exhibition we find two twisted pipe systems that seem to be deadlocked. On the other wall we find “Broken,” a cluster of broken ceramic pieces representing disappointment, fragility, and dysfunction. Two video pieces titled “The Craftsman” and “The Ruinous” are shown on the adjacent wall, the first featuring the artist hard at work, constructing her pieces, and the latter showing her breaking and destroying her works. Certainly, for the artist, destruction is an integral part of the strenuous production process, which requires both mental and physical strength. Therefore, the idea of showing the “kitchen” where everything is constructed is more than necessary, especially in today’s world where traditional ways of producing art is no longer popular. In fact, Bingöl’s choice of material—ceramic—indicates a type of resistance to mainstream understanding of contemporary art and a brittle but solid way to adhere to the contemporary.

The second exhibition is Günseli Kato’s “Tradition Now” (Gelenek Şimdi) featured at Galeri G-art in Maçka until 30 June. Günseli Kato is a prominent artist whose extensive knowledge in miniature manifests itself with the wonderful collection of pieces featured in this show. The artist brought these works together for the benefit of AÇEV, a Turkishnon-governmental organization which does research, program development, program implementation, and advocacy for early childhood and adult education.

Although the small gallery space is not necessarily the ideal place to present Kato’s large-sized roaring lions, observing angels, golden trees, and colorful horses hanging from the ceiling, each piece invites the viewer to pay attention to an art that has been forgotten due to new trends in image production. The title of the exhibition carries urgency in its language—by reminding the viewer of a miniature treasure of the past, the artist calls for a re-examination of our perception of it as well.

Kato believes that the art of miniature cannot be maintained by making reproductions of old motifs and models. The figures Kato chooses to include in this exhibition all belong to past centuries’ miniature works. However, her contemporary take on them is what makes them unique and admirable. Kato has created a magical universe loaded with symbols, and she invites us in with the condition that we make up our own fantasies as our eyes ponder upon each piece. This is Kato’s way of updating traditional arts.

Now…cancel your next TV-show marathon, head to these exhibitions, and rethinkthe way you understand contemporary art.

This week Istanbul will be hosting another international film festival that brings together 80 documentaries produced in over 40 countries. An independent initiative organized by young filmmakers, the 4^th Documentarist: Istanbul Documentary Days festival will take place between 31 May - 5 June with screenings at the French Cultural Center, Akbank Sanat, Pera Museum, Cezayir, IFEA (Fransiz Anadolu Araştırmaları Enstitüsü), and Sismanoglio Megaro.

Each year, the carefully selected films cover an extensive array of issues concerning politics, social life, arts, environment, and personal stories. This year, more specifically, the focus is on the post-Communist period, the Arab world, ethnographic documentaries, and music. The festival also includes a selection of Turkish documentaries (SIYAD selections and much more).

The list of films included in the festival is striking as it includes a wide range of cinematic and thematic approaches. InMy Sweet Canary, Roy Sher tells the story of Roza Eskenazi through the eyes of three young musicians from Greece, Turkey, and Israel. Three friends embark on a musical journey from Istanbul to Thessaloniki and then to Athens to follow the trail of this phenomenal musician who has never been the subject of a film prior to My Sweet Canary. Quite different from this one is Greek Crisis Explained, a 3-minute film interpretation of the recent financial crisis that Greece has gone through.

A Bitter Taste of Freedomby Marina Goldovskaya is an astonishing portrait of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya who was murdered when she was 48 years old. The timing of this documentary is especially important considering the heated discussions and controversies that have recently come up about the media and freedom of speech. 12 Angry Lebanese is a film by Zeina Daccache, who set up the first drama project in a Lebanese prison. The film is based on this 15-month long project, taking place in the notorious Roumieh Prison.

Some award-winning films are especially crucial in rethinking the genre of documentary filmmaking. Andrei Ujica’sThe Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu, for instance, is made up of 1000 hours of archival footage, extending the limits of documentary filmmaking from the get-go. The documentary is evidence that it is possible to compose and finalize a film on recent history based entirely on existing footage and images.

Through a selection of works from the 1950s to today, the section “Anthropology and Documentary” surveys the role of film in anthropological studies and vice versa. Jean Rouch’s pioneering work The Mad Masters(1955) and Secrets of the Tribe (2010) by Jose Padilha will allow the audience to think about representation and what has changed in the past half century in ethnological documentary making. The latter will also give insight into the ethically questionable ways that many anthropologists have explored and portrayed “other” communities.

Over the week, not only films but also many filmmakers will be crossing the city. This year’s guest of honor is the internationally acclaimed Czech documentarist Helena Trestikova, who received the European Film Academy’s Prix Arte award in Copenhagen with her documentary film Rene. This documentary was filmed over a 20-year period following the story of René Plasil, a habitual criminal who was sent to prison for the first time at the age of 16. Rene is the second leg of a trilogy that aims to observe women in long periods of time. Shot over 14 years, Trestikova’s latest documentary Katka aims to understand a woman who is a drug addict trying to get off heroin. Her films Rene; Katka; Hitler, Stalin and I; Carmen Story; Marriage Stories: Zuzana and Stanislav; and Marriage Stories 20 Years Later: Zuzana and Stanislav will be screened as part of the festival. Trestikova will also be holding a master class on Saturday June 4 at Akbank Sanat*.

Another exciting guest is the Istanbul-born visual anthropologist Asen Balıkçı. Apioneer in the field of ethnographic filmmaking, Balıkçı got his degree in anthropology at Columbia University where he studied with the late cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead. Between the years 1957-1965, he conducted fieldwork with the Netsilik Eskimo. One of his strongest works on the Netsilik Eskimo, At the Winter Sea Ice Camp, which he co-directed with Quentin Brown, will be screened as a two-part documentary. For the first time, the Turkish audience will be able to meet Asen Balıkçı and discuss his work on Friday 3 June between 04:00pm – 07:00pm at Akbank Sanat.

During the festival the audience will also be able to see a selection of the prominent Syrian activist and filmmaker Omar Amiralay’s documentary films:A Plate of Sardines or The First Time I Heard of Israel,Everyday Life in a Syrian Village, andEssay on the Euphrates Dam.

An event that shouldn’t be missed is “A Wall is a Screen” (aka cinematic walk) on Friday June 3, starting at 08:30pm at Tünel Square. Performed by a German group from Hamburg who describe it as “a combination of a guided city tour and a film night,” this activity will feature short film screenings on building walls in the Beyoğlu area.

For a full list of films, screening times, and detailed information on the festival’s entire list of side events, please visit http://www.documentarist.org. Tickets cost 4TL and can be purchased at http://www.mybilet.com/belgeselFilmFest.php.

*The master class will be held between 11:00am –02:00pm. The admission is free, but you need to reserve a seat by emailing program@documentarist.org.)

The exhibition "I am not a studio artist"by Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin at Istanbul’s newest gallery SALT is Alptekin’s most comprehensive exhibition to be showcased in Turkey or abroad so far. The retrospective organized by Vasıf Kortun and Duygu Demir from the programs and research team at SALT allows the audience to view photo-installations, collages, videos, and objects as well as newly-commissioned works of renowned artists whose paths have crossed Alptekin’s through various channels during his years of artistic practice.

Nomadic artist, writer, lecturer, and curator, Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin (1957-2007) studied aesthetics, philosophy of art, and sociology in Istanbul and Paris. After working as a photographer for SIPA Press and writing for various publications as an art and design critic, Alptekin lectured at Bilkent University and Istanbul Bilgi University, while also continuing his art practice.

He participated in various international exhibitions including São Paolo Biennial (1998); Cetinje Biennial (2002), where he won the UNESCO Prize; How Latitudes Become Forms, Walker Art Center (2003); Manifesta 5 (2004); and the International Istanbul Biennial (1995, 2005). With his installation Don’t Complain, Alptekin also represented Turkey in the 52nd Venice Biennale, which also marks the first time a Turkish Pavilion was held in Venice.

Alptekin’s multivalent art practice presents itself on the surface level by the multitude of mediums and materials he uses. While he uses a variety of popular materials in his works, Alptekin explores pressing issues in depth, such as globalization, immigration, exile, and cross-cultural image circulation.

For the exhibition I am not a studio artist SALT has tracked and collected many of Alptekin’s works that have been sitting in various storage rooms of collectors and international art centers and also reproduced some works that have not survived. The walk-in cinema on the entrance floor also showcases a series of interviews with the colleagues and friends of Alptekin, which shed a personal light on the artist. Impromptu talks and screenings are also hosted as part of the programming.

The breadth and density of Alptekin’s works reflect an artist who was profoundly interested in localities and the issues of his day as well as someone who was acutely conscious of human existential conditions and psychological inclinations. Heterotopia is a 3D collage work on which he collaborated with Michael Morris. Alptekin and Morris enjoyed going to the weekly markets in Ankara, with vendors selling random bits and pieces, and cheap vodka and caviar circulating from the former Soviet countries. As they viewed and shopped from the tezgah (stalls) at this market, Alptekin and Morris came to see the vendors’ stalls as a way of exhibition making. Drawing inspiration from the prominent French philosopher and social theorist Foucault, they set up their own tezgah, juxtaposing objects that, when displayed together, hint at other “heterotopic” places.

The piece Global Digestion was influenced by Slovenian philosopher and critical theorist Slavoj Žižek’s book The Plague of Fantasies in which Žižek writes about the cultural differences between how people go to the bathroom. Global Digestion brings together tens of photos of various bathrooms, which Alptekin encountered during his travels. In fact, many of Alptekin’s works involve an aspect of traveling, be it the social issues he recognizes at the places he visits and/or larger questions regarding globalization and trans-nationalism. One of his most prominent works H-Fact: Hospitality/Hostilityis a great example of how Alptekin points at issues surrounding travel, immigration, and prejudices in various places.

The work Winter Depression (and other works, such as Artist in Depression and Artist in Summer Depression thatare not on view) features a diagnosis table. The table on view is a re-construction, but it is modeled after the original one, which belonged to Alptekin’s father who was a doctor. The image that covers the wall on the back is taken from French theorist Guy Debord’s Society of Spectacle. This same section showcases photographs of Alptekin’s experiments with ancient healing practices and his visit to a sanatorium, depicting white curtains billowing into a corridor within the sanatorium.

The exhibitionis not only a retrospective but also hosts newly commissioned works by artists Camila Rocha, Gülsün Karamustafa, Nedko Solakov, Gabriel Lester, and Can Altay. Each artist has contributed pieces of works that deal with and respond to Alptekin’s life and practice. For instance, Can Altay’s kinetic installation work called Merzbahri: Global Hangover(2011)is made of wood, plastic balls, and plexi as a reference to Alptekin’s choice in materials. The work as a whole also hints at motifs from Alptekin’s life and travels.

Alptekin’s photo series of the sanatorium is tactfully complimented by Gabriel Lester’s work Melancholiain Arkadia (to my dear friend)(2011), which features real curtains hung by the windowpanes on the second floor of SALT. With a special chemical material the curtains were made to look as though the wind blew in and Alptekin’s soul just left the room through the billowing curtains. The work is delicate, especially relevant, and moving considering Alptekin’s sudden death in 2007. It is as if Lester is paying respects to his friend and bidding him a personal farewell behind the curtains.

This beautiful tribute to Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin offers the viewers an unprecedented opportunity to dive into the work of an outstanding persona. Accompanying the exhibition, which will last until August 7, a comprehensive book on Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin edited by Duygu Demir is available for sale in Turkish and English at Robinson Crusoe 389 bookshop at SALT.

As we are nearing the end of the first decade into the 21st century, Istanbul seems to be at the top of the list of “must see” cities of the global literati and arterati. Even though the city made a passionate plea in contemporary art with the launch of the Biennial in 1987, much of this new buzz around the city owes to contemporary art museums, galleries and non-profit venues that sprung up within this decade. As wealthy families decided to share their art collections with the public, the city gained a number of brand new museums and exhibition spaces. Young artists and curators began to participate by forming collectives and opening venues and the contemporary art scene began to flourish. The crowning of Istanbul as one of the European capitals of culture this year only added to this buzz. Now with the beginning of the new fall season, not a week goes by before you stumble upon a show opening, an after-party or an artist’s talk.

Most of these new and independent art spaces have found a home for themselves in neighborhoods around the cultural center Beyoğlu, Galata and Tophane, neighborhoods once seen as sketchy and even dangerous are now being quickly gentrified. We picked six promising venues to keep you up-to-date with what is going on in the young contemporary art scene of the city.

Milk

Design Gallery and Store

Milk is one of the first galleries to move into Galata before the condo projects in the area gained momentum and Serdar-ı Ekrem Caddesi began looking like a street straight out of Florence. Located in a dead-end alley off Galip Dede Caddesi, it is a bold initiative started by Elif Çevik, a project manager at an advertising agency, and Can Başyiğit, a freelance web designer. These two enthusiasts rushed to see design galleries whenever they went abroad and were frustrated with the lack of a venue for the design-obsessed. It took them two years to realize their dream of starting a gallery of their own in Istanbul where there can showcase both local and international talents in contemporary design.

Milk takes a democratic approach when it comes to picking up artists: they will look at any portfolio. That’s why you might see here a show of paper toys or illustrations by a Romanian artist or a local graffiti artist. In their store section, a variety of design items such as shoes, magnets, t-shirts, posters and toys by Derin Çiler, Ohm, Eyesores, Ndeur, and Çiğdem Paçal can be purchased.

ALANistanbul

Open since August 2009, ALANistanbul sits comfortably on the top floor of an old commercial building on Galip Dede Caddesi on the way to the Galata Tower. It was formed by two architects deeply interested in contemporary art, Arzu Ikiz and Efe Korkut Kurt, and a painter and ceramic artist, Aslı Biçer. The name ‘alan’ means space in Turkish and suggests a freedom of space and action - whether it is a music piece they want to play or a site-specific installation of handmade toys: their wide-ranging artists are free to transform this space in any way they want. The ALANistanbul team explains why they work with multi-disciplinary artists who are at different stages in their careers: “We dwell more on what the artist is doing to ALAN (space) and the performance of the exhibition itself than solely on the artist.”

With its smallish space covered with exposed brick and a rooftop boasting magnificent views of the Old City, ALANistanbul has hosted quite a number of shows and parties since its inception.

Outlet

“Outlet is an attempt to bring art, regarded as a luxury commodity, to the masses in a time and space where social and cultural inequity is deeply entrenched,” says Outlet Gallery’s owner Azra Tüzünoğlu. Located in a small shop with a basement used as a Project Room, Outlet functions both as a non-profit exhibition space and a commercial gallery. Since its opening in 2008, it aims to bring a fresh approach to the gallery scene with striking shows with an emphasis on the artists coming from all parts of Turkey, not only confined to Istanbul.

Coming from a sociology background, Tüzünoğlu has written on contemporary art in Turkey and worked as the editor of Art-Ist magazine. At Outlet, she experiments between organizing solo shows for artists and curating large-scale, political group shows. Tufan Baltalar, Şener Özmen, Cengiz Tekin, Hamra Abbas (who recently won the Abraaj Capital Prize, one of the largerst prizes granted to a team of artists working together in the Middle East region), Servet Koçyiğit, and Fikret Atay are among the names represented by this ambitious young gallery.

Galeri Non

Non is one of the pioneering venues that set up shop in the Tophane area, just south of Galatasaray. Stacked between home appliance shops, Non fills its spacious ground floor with a large solid glass window and smallish basement with works by emerging artists; on the mezzanine level connected by a short flight of iron stairs is the tiny office where experienced curator Derya Demir and her coordinator Barış Berker Karakoç sits. Demir has been an active force in the city’s cultural life with a series of commendable projects over the years: in 2008, she curated a group exhibit called “You Can’t Kiss Away a Murder” at Galerist; founded a performance art organization called Art On Stage; and with artist friend Leyla Gediz, started Galeri Splendid, which was nevertheless short-lived. She opened Non in 2009 and says her new gallery is “devoted to artists who embrace a non-disciplinary art practice resulting in new languages and artistic experiences.” She keeps her space open to new possibilities and has an ambitious roster of young up and coming artists, which she takes to international art fairs around the world.

Depo

Depo, also known as the Tütün Deposu (which means tobacco factory), was first used as an exhibition space during the 9^th Istanbul Biennial in 2005. It pleasantly surprised many viewers to discover such an authentic place where you could see and hear what’s going on at the gallery downstairs through the cracks in the wooden floors. Anadolu Kültür, an 8-year-old civil initiative and an NGO focused on community development through arts and culture, took up the run-down four-story building in 2008 and turned it into a well-kept non-profit venue.

Because of its square-foot advantage, most of the time Depo plays host to large-scale group shows. Its stated mission is to act as a catalyst in facilitating relations between the cultural worlds of Turkey, South Caucasus, the Middle East and the Balkans so you can see a lot of international, politically charged shows here.

Sanat Limanı

Antrepo 5, a venue also made familiar to the art audience through the biennials, turned into Sanat Limanı this year as part of the efforts of Istanbul Capital of Culture 2010 Agency to make contemporary art more accessible and visible to the public.

Led by Beral Madra, the head of Visual Arts department at the Agency, the 3,600 square-meter space on the waterfront in Kabataş was set up as an exhibition venue until the end of this year to host international and local art shows funded by the Agency. The venue opened with four different shows in June, among which the video show of 10 international women artists stood out.