Territories of Commitments

“Territories of Commitments” at BERLINARTPROJECTS is the first in a series of exhibitions on current photography: “Greetings From Now On”. This edition brings together the probing work of six Istanbul-based artists, showing how they negotiate and interact with the space which they inhabit – the rapidly expanding Turkish metropolis, conflicted and divided through the current complex urban and societal context and the significant recent changes that the city has been undergoing at one of the crossroads of global conflicts and migration.

Ali Taptik’s series The Drift features urban scapes, images captured in the constantly changing city. Known for his reflective monochrome works, Yusuf Sevinçli shares a conceptual link with Taptik, capturing the city in moody black and white images. The empty houses of photographer and post-internet artist Zeynep Beler speak volumes about her stance toward real estate politics in Turkey. Buğra Erol’s lightbox takes on a larger territory, using slides from his time as a Greenpeace activist to create his work. Moving from a larger territory to a more intimate one, Seza Bali’s One Man Show is a series of letters containing business cards collected by her father who was a traveling salesman in Turkey. A personal approach to art is also what characterises Joana Kohen’s practice, whose works show her fighting for her position as a female artist in Turkey and strongly engaging in the gender discourse – a conceptual territory as well as a political one.