America News Agency

Ways to think about the past with the future
One of the new exhibitions that Pera Museum will present to the audience in the autumn, "Memories of the Future," focuses on what is remembered through objects and explores the connections established between memory and future imaginations through contemporary works. In the section titled "What Motifs Remind," works are brought together based on the motifs used in ceramic ornaments, while in the section "Memory of Objects," stories are told through ceramic objects. The exhibition's section titled "Memory of the Region" presents spatial interventions and site-specific installations, while "Remembering the Future" brings together speculative objects, videos, and photographs to represent future memory objects.

In the "Memories of the Future" exhibition, which is organized in memory of Suna Kıraç, the founder of the Kütahya Ceramics and Pottery Collection displayed at the Pera Museum, the cultural and symbolic value and meaning of objects that remember a specific place and time are interwoven with personal journeys. Instead of a nostalgic attachment to the past, the exhibition suggests thinking about how we will remember the future, encouraging us to consider the future-oriented functions of memory.

Artists whose works are exhibited in "Memories of the Future" include Adriana Varejao, Aslı Çavuşoğlu, Bilal Yılmaz, Burçak Bingöl, Candice Lin, Deniz Eroglu, Elif Uras, Francesco Simeti, Jorge Otero-Pailos, Livia Marin, Metehan Törer, Neven Allgeier, Oddviz, Skuja Braden, Taner Ceylan, Volkan Aslan, Yasemin Özcan, and Zsofia Keresztes.

Where does Istanbul's panoramic history stand?
The exhibition "Exactly in Place: A Historical Look at Istanbul Through Panoramic Views" aims to evaluate Istanbul's representation history through panoramic paintings and photographs from new perspectives. Curated by Çiğdem Kafescioğlu, K. Mehmet Kentel, and M. Baha Tanman, the exhibition critically examines the history of the "panorama" form in different dimensions and contexts. While it centers on 19th-century panoramas and panoramic images, the exhibition invites the viewer to rethink the history of panoramic vision and Istanbul's position within this history during the early modern period.

The exhibition questions the layered relationships in the production and consumption of panoramic images, as well as the circulation of images among different audiences, their modes of perception, and their connections to various media that have become prevalent over the centuries. Additionally, the exhibition features a work from early 19th-century panoramas that has never been exhibited or published before. The exhibition brings together a selection of works by artists who depicted Istanbul panoramically, such as Barker, Gudenus, Schranz, Melling, Dunn, and Robertson, revealing how panoramas have been used to document various elements of Istanbul's history, from fire disasters to industrialization.

Accompanying the exhibition is a comprehensive catalog with articles that aim to read the circulation of this representational form in the Ottoman world and Europe through a selection of materials that includes ephemera and archival documents in addition to paintings, prints, and photographs. The catalog includes articles by Ahmet A. Ersoy, Namık Günay Erkal, Erkki Huhtamo, Tarkan Okçuoğlu, and A. Hilal Uğurlu.

Pera Museum's new exhibitions, "Memories of the Future" and "Exactly in Place: A Historical Look at Istanbul Through Panoramic Views," can be visited from October 26, 2023, to February 25, 2024.