A New Istanbul Modern to a New Istanbul
The new building of Istanbul Modern, Turkey’s first modern and contemporary art museum, masterminded by Renzo Piano is shining bright like a pearl at GalataPort, a place most of us, Istanbul citizens, were against the very idea of before it even existed regarding some political issues.
When you enter through the giant glass doors, you are glad to get away from the mass of people that covers the whole city like a pest. Maybe it was because it was a weekday, but the number of people was absolutely spot on, in fact when we were supposed to be leaving to go to GalataPort, I found myself making excuses.
After buying your ticket (I would have liked to talk more about the price of the ticket in an ideal world), the first exhibition you see is Always Here. A temporary exhibition bringing together Turkish women artists, I have to admit that it was not an exhibition I was very fond of from the very beginning. I would have preferred that there was a concern to include more daring works by a name like Nilbar Güreş. In any case, the fact that it brings together the works of Turkish women artists from different generations is enough to make this exhibition interesting in itself. I can say that Hera Büyüktaşçıyan’s ceramics with feet, Burcu Yağcıoğlu’s hairless mole in a diamond, and Sibel Horada’s “forest” were the works that caught my attention the most. And of course, I had the great pleasure of examining İnci Eviner’s unique lines that we have become accustomed to. Within the installation called Self-Portrait: Character Embodiment by a name I always associate with patience, Mehtap Baydu, a poem written on A4 sheets hung on the wall was particularly striking to me:
It is hard to be a woman.
One has to think like a man,
act like a woman,
look like a girl and
work like a horse.
In the gallery next door, portraits taken by a master director from all around world are waiting to penetrate deep within your soul. At Nuri Bilge Ceylan: In Another Place exhibition, 22 different portraits and more than 22 pairs of eyes seem to be examining you as if they want to see your innermost being. Among all the portraits, Orphans was the only one I stood in front of and pondered about the cards distributed at birth. As opposite of the other portraits, the eyes were not looking at you. There were expressions on the faces of the orphans reading the Quran at the graves of their parents in Erzurum with expressions that should not be found on the faces of children that age.
I am always distant from “Human Zoo” photographers, but Ceylan’s portraits were clearly taken with a real need to document. You can feel involved in the intimate lives of the subjects, some of whom are children, some of whom are quite old, with a single frame. All the portraits are more of a documentary than a photograph. Just as we would expect from Nuri Bilge Ceylan.
The Pompidou Museum’s architect Piana’s masterpiece, photographed by Cemal Emden during the construction of the building, is part of another exhibition, The Construction of Architecture, which is spread all over the museum . The difference between the workers, whose hands are tied the most in terms of socioeconomic status, and the sterile building where the photographs are located is like an elegy to being an Istanbulite. Throughout the museum, the number of artworks that will remind you of Istanbul’s duality is considerable.
The Floating Islands exhibition, on the other hand, hosts foreign artists with considerable worldwide recognition and names that are frequently encountered by those interested in art in Turkey. First of all, I would like to express how happy I am to see so many Turkish modern and contemporary artists in one exhibition. In all the European cities I have visited before, I have definitely tried to visit modern or contemporary art museums. The number of artists I could see from my own country was not many, whereas here, all these works spoke directly to me. Because I speak the same language and share the same culture with the minds that gave birth to them. Especially in Ferhat Özgür’s I Can Sing, I almost couldn’t contain my laughter when I witnessed a woman in a turban singing Hallelujah in front of a background similar to TOKİ (a governmental construction company) constructions. When I saw Halil Altındere’s huge “new generation” ID cards representing his familiar humor and Ayşe Erkmen’s Elephant, I grinned as if I was included in an inside joke.
Bedri Baykam’s Tony Shouting to the World, a large-scale graffiti-inspired work, was in stark contrast to Mehmet Güleryüz’s la tristesse majestueuse*, which can be found in many of his works. There were so many large-scale works included in the exhibition, I was struck by our middle easternness. On the one hand, you have to accept that this is human nature, just like the reason for the size of churches, we want to bow down to greatness.
I was also very happy to see that Turkish women performance artists such as Şükran Moral and Nezaket Ekici were included. I think there is a close connection between performance art and Turkish women. Maybe what we are exposed to manifests itself in this way, it becomes an action, just like Moral who had a wedding in the village with 3 different husbands.
Based on all this, I am convinced that this is definitely a museum to visit. The ferries that you can watch through the glass windows squeezed in between while touring the building and the crows taking a shower on the Observation Terrace add a whole new charm beyond the works of art. It is not an address you stop by when you are on your way, but an address you can change your way for.
That’s all for today.
Until next time :)
*la tristesse majestueuse: A French expression used by Jean Racine in his work “Berenice”. It can be translated as majestic sadness.
