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On the 100th anniversary of the Republic of Turkey, The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents “Dialogues: Modern Artists and the Ottoman Past” an exhibition that explores contemporary and modern Turkish artists’ ties to Ottoman art and their approaches to modern Turkish art. Curated by Deniz Beyazıt and open until June 30, the exhibition features works by Burhan Doğançay, Erol Akyavaş, Peter Hristoff, Gülay Semercioğlu, Elif Uras, Burçak Bingöl and Aliye Berger.
Dedicated to the art of the Ottoman world, Koç Family Galleries 459 and 460 highlight seven modern and contemporary works that engage with Islamic and Ottoman cultural heritage. These works reflect the creative approaches to the Ottoman past of three generations of artists from Turkey and abroad. Some are proud of their connection to historical traditions; others reject this heritage but remain subconsciously connected to Ottoman culture. Modern preoccupations include calligraphy and decorative arts, as well as the traditions of manuscript painting, textile weaving and ceramic production. Some artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries reuse these features of Ottoman art to confront gender, taboos, and other elements in modern Turkey.
This intervention compares modern and contemporary works with their Ottoman ancestors, asking the following questions: What defines modern Turkish art? How does it differ from “craft”, especially in light of Turkey’s rich ceramic and textile traditions? Each of the artists in the exhibition has developed a distinct artistic identity, using, renewing, or diverging from the styles, genres, and creative traditions of the Ottoman past, while incorporating the methods and principles of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Turkish, European, and American art. The dialogues between these modern and historical works bridge the gaps of time and space to participate in a larger, global dialogue of modernity.