Bare, Naked, Nude

Bare, Naked, Nude: A Story of Modernization in Turkish Painting aimed to reveal the transformation from the Ottoman Empire into the Republican Era and how the few secretly made paintings at the turn of the 20th century created a new perspective for present times. The exhibition focused on how artists strived to overcome the cultural resistance against artistic representations of nudity. Bare, Naked, Nude further explored: the evolution of the ‘artist’ from being a ‘subject’ to the Sultan to becoming an ‘individual,’ the pains of transitioning from one mindset to another; the struggle of identity between the artist and the ‘Muslim-Turk’; the process of establishing a new perception devoid of sexuality of the female body that was solely associated with privacy and seclusion; and the association between the modern(ized) perception of art and the nude form…

25 November 2015 – 07 February 2016

Curator:
Ahu Antmen

Exhibition design:
Cem Kozar, Işıl Ünal