Tarabya is located on the water, more precisely on the Bosphorus. The Bosporus connects Europe with Asia, the Black Sea with the Marmara Sea. Tarabya was and is a gift: in 1880 Sultan Abdülhamid II, the last head of the Ottoman Empire, bequeathed the 18-hectare park to Kaiser Wilhelm, and in 1887 the German ambassador moved into the summer residence. Tarabya, first called Pharmazia, then Therapia, is not only used by the scholarship holder of the cultural academy founded in 2011 as a quasi-therapeutic place to stay, but is rather a patient of himself due to its interwoven history. The saying “su gibi git / su gibi gel – go like water / come like water ” has become the blueprint for the cultural academy’s anniversary festival. It describes a ritual and a state at the same time. The custom, practiced to this day, accompanies the moment between departure and arrival, being in the flow. At the invitation of the curators, the scholarship holder Viron Erol Vert chose the dualism of coming and going for the design of a room that gives an insight into the interdisciplinary work of the 106 scholarship holders over the past ten years.
The Studio Bosporus exhibition tells of Tarabya, his influence, what it means to be a guest and how the hermetic nature of this place is transformed into a network and affects the city: immerse, emerge, immerse – in the complex worlds of the German-Turkish cultural and political hub in Istanbul. The artistic debates of the scholarship holders testify to the historical connection lines between the Ottoman and German empires and the resulting conflicts. Studio Bosporus presents works that were created during the respective scholarships and thus reports on a place that stands for artistic freedom. In addition, the exhibition shows works that were produced at other times and report on various forms of migration. About the consequences of the so-called recruitment agreement, signed on October 30, 1961 between the Foreign Office in Bonn and the Turkish embassy in Germany, to this day. About how the economic draft horse Istanbul, shaped by neoliberal urban planning projects of the last 20 years, brings about ecological and social displacement. Of normative and suppressive body politics, appropriation and resistance, protests and psychogeographic discoveries.
Participating artists: Nevin Aladağ, Patrizia Bach & Regina Dürig, Mehtap Baydu, Shulamit Bruckstein Coruh, Isaac Chong Wai, Silvina Der-Meguerditchian, Nezaket Ekici, Stefan Endewardt, Annika Eriksson, Esra Ersen, Theo Eshetu, Adrian Figueroa, Isabella Gerstner, Manaf Halbouni, Christian Jankowski & Class, Franziska Klotz, Ola Kolehmainen, Philipp Lachenmann, Andréas Lang, Julia Lazarus, Mona Mahall & Aslı Serbest, Hakan Savaş Mican, Funda Özgünaydın, Jim Rakete, Moritz Rinke, Jan Ralske, Berthold Reiß & Lilian Robl, Eva Stotz, Youssef Tabti, Sencer Vardarman, Mariana Vassileva, Viron Erol Vert, Zora Volantes
The exhibition was curated by Stéphane Bauer (Director of the Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Bethanien), Pia Entenmann (Curatorial director of the Tarabya Cultural Academy), Çağla İlk (Director of the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden) and Susanne Weiß (Curator, Director of the ifa gallery).
You can find the works of the exhibition here
