Karamustafa’s works to go on display

ISTANBUL

Gülsün Karamustafa’s works, contemporary artist, will be at Salt Galata and Salt Beyoğlu. Exhibition starts in Sept 10 and continues until January.

“A Promised Exhibition,” the most comprehensive presentation of Turkish contemporary artist Gülsün Karamustafa’s works to date, both in Turkey and internationally, goes on view at SALT Beyoğlu and SALT Galata on Sept. 10.

A long-overdue survey, “A Promised Exhibition” takes its name from the artist’s series “Promised Paintings” (1998-2004), and puts in perspective the two disparate yet concurrent aspects of Karamustafa’s artistic career: paintings made with the local audience in mind and a more intrepid experimental practice, which coalesces with this specific series of paintings.

The exhibition spans the artist’s entire oeuvre including painting, collage, installation, and video works from the early 1970s to today. Comprising a comprehensive selection of her works, “A Promised Exhibition” does not unfold in a chronological manner, but rather mimics the spiral movement of the artist’s practice.

Using diverse media

Working in diverse media throughout her four-decade-long career, Karamustafa has investigated ideas of mobility, including displacement, immigration, expatriation, exile, and relocation. Her installation “Mystic Transport” (1992) - originally made for the 3rd Istanbul Biennial and here installed on the second floor of SALT Beyoğlu - consists of colorful quilts stuffed in metal baskets that the visitors can move around the exhibition space, and is the most emblematic example of these themes. For Karamustafa, the use of everyday materials, carrying with multiple associations, became an artistic strategy that reflected the new visual culture that took shape in the country in the early 1970s and peaked in the 1980s - a result of the massive waves of internal migration from rural Turkey to its major cities.