Museum Without Walls questions feelings

ISTANBUL

The British Council has launched the fifth exhibition of its award-winning Museum Without Walls platform, “Does It Feel Cosy?” Co-curated by Rita Aktay, representing Turkey, and Ritika Biswas, representing the U.K., the exhibition explores what it means to feel at home within and outside of oneself, and this oneiric journey meanders across the emotional and political landscapes of care and crisis, survival and belonging.

The exhibition brings together works from British Council Collection’s artists and works by contemporary international artists around the same themes. Curators aimed that the theme would be understandable by everyone who would get to experience the exhibition. The accessible platform presents 40 works of 27 artists in many different genres such as videos, photographs, paintings and installations.

The platform brings together international artists who use their creativity to reflect on social issues, including gender.

“The exhibition looks at the female body, domestic space and planetary ecologies as sites of anxiety, rumination, and kinship,” the curators said, adding that in holding space for joy and grief to co-exist, this journey meanders across the emotional and political landscapes of care and crisis, survival and belonging.

Considering the hardships and obstacles everyone has seen during the pandemic, the theme of the exhibition stands as a distinctive show. While it lets us experience the power of collective memory, “Does it Feel Cosy?” opens a new dimension in terms of understanding the feelings of others.

Everyone shares visions of community, collective survival and cross-species nurture, especially when the global pandemic continues to unfold its fundamental and unsettling effects, the curators said.

Viewers will have the opportunity to choose an emoji to guide their personal exhibition selection. Women speak to glaciers, household objects become alien, racialized bodies break their silence and monsters become intimate. Through humor, exaggeration, modification, beautification and intervention, the works activate curiosity and solidarity, creating infinite portals between lived and imagined worlds.

Digital art exhibition to mitigate obstacles

The Museum Without Walls is a valuable project that enables everyone to discover art everywhere they want. In some ways, Museum Without Walls helps everyone to have a museum experience while it enables disadvantaged groups to reach the art.

“Does It Feel Cosy?” enables visitors to experience and discover the exhibition at their own pace and without any limitations of time or physical capability.

The exhibition offers an audio description of each artwork and the interpretations of all texts and is compatible with screen readers.

The exhibition is online at https://exhibitions.britishcouncil.org