By Leyla H. Karagöz ~
In cosmopolitan Turkish studios in Istanbul, as fine Anatolian village tradition would have it, and even in mad virtual salons of the internet, an effervescing artistic revolution fermenting overpowers. These are the new Turkish artists who disregard traditional ways of making art—and living. In humble marriage of the old and the new, the artists are creating works of art that are no longer a manifesto of culture but to the world in general.
Their. equipment is daunting: a. dipped-in. Ottoman symbolism brush, an electronic protest sign of stylus of painting, a re-threaded new model loom. They are members of a cause company in its otherness and dedicated to its membership. They are less telling Turkey’s lavishly scented past than bringing it back to life.
Reclaiming Tradition, Redefining Relevance
It is a demonstration of respect for heritage on their part. Hat (Islamic calligraphy), ebru (marbling), and halı (traditional carpet-making) influence new work grappling with identity, memory, and meaning.
Consider Istanbul artist Canan Tolon, for example, who employs references to architecture and culture to give objects cynically that witnessed the drama of the past and present colliding. Even more akin young artists such as Eda Emirdağ employed Ottoman miniature painting to create social commentary on consumer culture and gender.
By casting such vintage designs upon modern media—virtual reality, collaged digital image, and tagging—artists produce centuries-long dialogues. Not funk restoration into nostalgia, but funk rejuvenation. A “free remixing of the past,” opines art historian Dr. Gülru Tanman, which “reminds us of the memory of cultural motifs but makes us question whether they are relevant anymore today.”
Collaboration as Catalyst
The second feature of this movement is cooperative ethos. Cooperative ethos is crossdisciplinarity, i.e., artists working with filmmakers, musicians, fashion designers, computer programmers. Crossdisciplinary overlap creates new forms occupying the borderline space of any medium.
Istanbul’s Mixer Art Gallery is but one of the several sites that make the stranger a known quantity. There were collaborative works made of sculpture, sound, and virtual projection in the recent exhibitions—projects that raise such queries as gentrifying the city or saving the world.
Collaborations aren’t pushing the limits of imagination—they’re a platform for voiceless and silenced histories and minority voices. Gay/lesbian/bisexual artists, women artists, ethnic minorities are breaking in to an otherwise straightslipped art world, showing up en masse as common voice.
Digital Frontiers and Global Discourses
Since the previous century’s beginning of the digital era, there is no requirement for foreign artists to be Turkish nationals. Social media sites like Facebook and Instagram, in addition to social arts communities such as ArtConnect and Artsy, facilitate artists’ interactions with other artists as well as prospective consumers.
Consider virtual reality collective Aniconism, in which interactively narrated stories intersect with sacred geometry, or multidisciplinary Refik Anadol, using AI-generated works to explore memory and collective psyche. These are not reproducing other bodies URL but transforming the very essence of what art is, worldwide.
Something new is some export of culture: one secret Turkish, but now global and convenient everywhere.
Art as Activism
A land where political and social issues are the primary concern of people, arts became a cause célèbre en masse for socialists. The most spontaneous, the most immediate response of young Turkish artists to politics in Turkey—is to adopt such challenges of freedom of expression, women’s equality, refugees’ human rights, and an ecological tragedy.
As artist Meltem Şahin once put it in short, in an interview with Contemporary Istanbul, “In today’s Türkiye, art-making is a political act. Painting joy, or pain, or resistance is a gesture of presence.”
A Cultural Renaissance in Motion
What they’re constructing out of this charged conversation is a cosmopolitan but robust Turkish cultural renaissance. What they’re accomplishing, these loud artists, is not really reclaiming heritage—reclaiming it, briefly, bringing it back to life with fresh symbols, vocabulary, concepts of identity.
What they’re accomplishing is the opposite of former wisdom and tradition and demonstrates that identity is a positive, moving-forward energy.
By turning innovation on its mode in which they started, they’ve brought humankind into the age of imagination of courage, elegance, and limitless imagination.
The type of heritage they’re creating is not for Türkiye—it’s revolutionary.
