Female artists at Istanbul Modern
ISTANBUL
“Always Here,” one of the opening exhibitions at Istanbul Modern’s new building, showcases a selection of works from the museum collection acquired by the Women Artists Fund, established by Istanbul Modern in 2016 to support the production of women artists in Türkiye increase public awareness of their work and strengthen their representation.
“In line with sustainable strategies, one of Istanbul Modern's primary goals is to increase and support the production and visibility of female artists. With the support of the Istanbul Modern Women Artists Fund, which we established in 2016 for this purpose, we have added many works to our museum collection in seven years,” Istanbul Modern Chairwoman Oya Eczacıbaşı said.
The title, “Always Here,” is a reference to feminist art historian Linda Nochlin’s seminal essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” published in Artnews in 1971.
Examining the cultural basis of exclusion and the naturalization of sexist structures, Nochlin states that art is shaped by education and years of experimentation.
Throughout history, women everywhere were unable to receive education on equal terms with men, meaning that they had to expand the roles society envisioned for them to exist as artists. Thanks to a long struggle to achieve equality, women now have more opportunities to exhibit their work in museums and to be represented in collections.
From the outset, Istanbul Modern’s collection has featured women artists from different generations who came to prominence through the diversity of their subjects, techniques and materials and their diligence and courage in creating unique artistic languages.
Öykü Özsoy, chief curator of Istanbul Modern, said, “The artists in the exhibition share with us strong examples of today's art in their artistic production, the diversity of the techniques and materials they use, their care and courage in creating their own unique artistic language. While raising their voices against all kinds of discrimination and inequality, the artists tell in their works the problems of migration and its consequences, concepts such as power and belonging, the relations between memory, space and historiography, and the destruction caused by ecological disasters.”
The productions of Mehtap Baydu, Hera Büyüktaşcıyan, İnci Eviner, Selma Gürbüz, Nilbar Güreş, Sibel Horada, Bengü Karaduman, Zeynep Kayan, Ayça Telgeren, Güneş Terkol and Burcu Yağcıoğlu are shown in the exhibition.
Works acquired for the museum collection with the support of the Women Artists Fund can be viewed both in the “Always Here” selection and the collection exhibition.
