01.04 – 30.09.2024
Congratulations to new Keyholders! We are welcoming five new artists into the studio:
Rehan Miskci @rehanmiskci
Bat-Ami Rivlin @amirivlin
Elizabeth Shoby @shobystudio
Jennifer Teresa Villanueva @jennifer__teresa
Tianxing Xu @tianxingxu.art
We are so excited to see how they advance their practices through using the studios at LESP in the coming months!
Many thanks to the selection panelists:
Hidenori Ishii, Artist and former Keyholder
Naomi Lev, Director and Chief Curator at EFA Project Space, a program of The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts
Jeremy Ruiz, Printmaker at Two Palms
Kaegan Sparks, Associate Curator of Exhibitions, Mississippi Museum of Art
18.01 – 24.02.2024
Curator: Oğuz Karakütük
Press release
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Alix Marie, Antony Cairns, Arda Asena, Asger Carlsen, Burçak Bingöl, Cemil Batur Gökçeer, Cemre Yeşil Gönenli, Dafna Talmor, Ege Kanar, Görkem Ergün, Hannah Hughes, Irmak Canevi, Larissa Araz, Rehan Miskci, Ruth van Beek, Selim Süme
Curated by Oğuz Karakütük, the artists brought together in this exhibition open a discussion on the relationship between photography and reality, using the medium of photography to contemplate the medium itself. The works of 16 artists invited from Turkey and Europe invite viewers to reconsider both the reality of photography and reality itself simultaneously through images that are very close to and far from reality, creating ambiguities.
These artists, who can be considered as continuators of avant-garde approaches that push the boundaries of the narrative, expression, display, and representational power of photography, also establish strong connections with the past.
Named after the poem of the same name by Metin Altıok, "The Hunter of Thyself" seeks ways to create new and powerful veins for the production and consumption of photography in Turkey, while also aiming to discuss the narrow space that photography is confined to in Turkey.
This exhibition is also a tribute to Orhan Cem Çetin, who has been a hunter of thyself in the realm of Turkish photography from its inception to the present day and is regarded as the "leading figure of Turkish photography" for Ka, thanking him for the inspirations he has provided over the years.
Translating Worlds at DEPO
29.11.2023 – 27.01.2024
Curators: Milan Vukašinović & Nilüfer Şaşmazer
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Alev Ersan, Allora & Calzadilla, Annabelle Binnerts, Cansu Çakar, Daniel Otero Torres, Dejan Kaludjerović, Elsa Sahal, Fikos, Lika Tarkhan-Mouravi, Lucie Kamuswekera, Mercedes Azpilicueta, Rehan Miskci, Setareh Fatehi, Stephanie Misa, Walid Siti
Depo, Istanbul presents the Translating Worlds exhibition, which brings together old and new works of 15 artists from Turkey and abroad, between 29 November 2023 and 27 January 2024. The exhibition, which focuses on worldmaking power of translation and the stories that do not recognize linguistic borders, takes inspiration from the academic research conducted in the Retracing Connections project, at Uppsala University. The artists engage with the project’s fundamental texts that travelled between medieval languages and created a common narrative universe, in and around Byzantium. Fables and borderland epics stand together with Buddha’s transformation into a Muslim ascetic and then a Christian saint, and Alexander the Great’s conquests of skies and oceans in kaftan and turban. Avoiding both illustration and imitation, this group exhibition stages diverse approaches of contemporary artists to aspects and concepts of translation, cultural transmission and storytelling.
Offering a resting place to stories that wandered across centuries and languages, the artists grapple with issues of multilingualism, experiences of displacement, borderland subjectivities and colonial legacy. Their works are inspired and framed by the notions of untranslatability, of translation as a collective and prismatic practice, as a liminal experience inspiring admiration and contempt, and as potential practice of care or violence.
While the commissioned artists explore the connections between translation and storytelling, by blending medieval narratives with concepts from translation studies, the artists invited to the exhibition with their existing works establish a dialogue across time and mediums in a new context. As contemporary art encounters the composite Byzantine worlds, it elucidates transhistorical instances of co-creation and communal existence.
The exhibition opening is preceded by a dialogue between Alev Ersan and Matthew Reynolds, moderated by Milan Vukašinović, titled Translation: Multiplicities and Multitudes at Kıraathane Istanbul Literature House, on 28 November, at 19:00. The exhibition opening will feature a free verse conversation between setareh fatehi and Ogutu Muraya around the project (i) your story of me.
With the support of:
Riksbankens Jubileumsfond
Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul
SAHA – Supporting Contemporary Art from Turkey
Netherlands Consulate-General in Istanbul
Österreichisches Kulturforum Istanbul
Republic of Austria Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport
Mondriaan Foundation
FfAI – Foundation for Arts Initiatives
01.06 – 30.06.2023
