More going on there than one might think
ISTANBUL ― During the past week Istanbul locals have been waiting for snowflakes to appear in the air. It has been a humid November, with winds from the Black Sea increasing temperatures and creating a false sense of spring. Lately, it’s been difficult to tell which season we are inhabiting: a dark and cold one, or one that is still bright and warm. The day after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, the opening of a new museum exhibition was filled with young Turks struggling to make sense of the near 80-degree weather outside. News of the rise of the real estate mogul to the highest political power overseas almost failed to confound in comparison.
These days, it is not unusual to see young Turks in the city turning to art in troubled times. There is an almost palpable feeling of anxiety in Istanbul’s art scene. For some, it has led to depression, fear and melancholy. But for others, it seems to have given energy to the arts much like it did in years past.
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On Sept. 22, months after Art International announced that it was canceling this year’s Istanbul edition, New York-based Moving Image Immersive Media opened a special exhibition in Istanbul’s Alt Art, a new space that has become a favorite among locals. “New Realities” displayed works in augmented and virtual reality, including a compelling piece by Turkish artist Deniz Tortum that features a virtually recreated operation room from Istanbul’s Cerrahpaşa Hospital. As VR headset wearing viewers saw “the hospital through machinic vision, through point clouds,” there was a sense of defiance: those who were scared could remain so if they wished, but in Istanbul, we were here to enjoy art.
The same month Pera Museum hosted a show by Brooklyn-based new media artist Katherine Behar. At Borusan Contemporary, a new media museum located by Istanbul’s Bosphorus Strait, Canadian artist Edward Burtynsky’s ambitious “Aqua Shock: Selections from the Water Project” show opened its doors to a curious and large crowd. And more recently, Contemporary Istanbul, one of the city’s leading art fairs, brought together the artistic community and made headlines in national newspapers that had largely been dominated by political articles surrounding the coup….
