Salt reevaluates three exhibitions

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

The exhibiton ‘It was a time of conversation,’ which brings together the archives of three exhibitions as part of the Open Archive project, will continue until April 22.

Salt’s second Open Archive project, “It was a time of conversation,” calls for a reevaluation of three exhibitions from the first half of the 1990s in Turkey – “Elli Numara / Anı/Bellek II” (Number Fifty / Memory/Recollection II), “GAR” (Railway Station) and “Küreselleşme – Devlet, Sefalet, Şiddet” (Globalization – State, Misery, Violence) – based on original documents from the period.
The exhibition can be viewed through April 22 at Salt Galata.

“It was a time of conversation” is the visualization of Salt Research’s ongoing attempt to explore those exhibitions that have reached beyond commercial concerns, contributed to the clarification of new artistic and cultural moments, and produced ruptures – exhibitions that may have historic importance today.
This project was initiated by Salt Research’s Sezin Romi in 2010 and has since continued in collaboration with the exhibition’s organizers, artists and assistants. The project brings together information, documents and video from a variety of sources.

Curated by Ali Akay in 1995, “Küreselleşme – Devlet, Sefalet, Şiddet” was exhibited at Beyoğlu’s Devlet Han – at the time, the studio of Müşerref Zeytinoğlu and Emre Zeytinoğlu. The exhibition focused on state violence, violence against the state and violence between individuals and coincided with the fourth Istanbul Biennial.

The exhibition brings together the archives of these three exhibitions, all organized during a period when individuals from different disciplines were beginning to see art as a “form of conversation”
It takes these exhibitions – all products of collaboration and discussion – as a launching point, offering a new perspective on art in Turkey during the 1990s.