"Entangling with The Han" Exhibition Opens

From the exhibition introductory text:
“The Han is situated in the hustle and bustle of the city. Its brick and stone walls and arches carry the traces of the centuries engrained in its space. It is a peaceful haven and an alive node of troubled and beautiful messiness, inspiring creativity, care, questions, curiosity, and experimentation. It has the potential to put our stories in dialogue with each other, to combine manifold tones and rhythms to see how they resonate, and to experience how to become a community.   Spring Semester of Interior Design Studio, Heritage/Critical Practices track, entangled with Kurşunlu Han and Ali Paşa Han. We developed spatial mediation tactics for adding new to the old that stem from the representations of the already existing.  We sketched, drew, and made models to dig out the hidden potentials and memories and entangle with both the tangible and the intangible. These mediums drew out the Han, revealed the spatial qualities, tectonic and programmatic conversations and correspondences.

Through our exhibition at Arthan Gallery (Kurşunlu Han, Karaköy) between 29 June - 12 July 2024, we invite you to a ‘joyful militancy’¹ to be in solidarity with the Han through embodied practices, interwoven relationships, scale shifts, and speculative and active ways of exploration; to slow down, get close, contaminate, be aware of the emergent, ask questions, and push the limits of critique towards new encounters; to go beyond schooling, radical perfectionism, and lack-finding; and to hold ambivalence performatively and peacefully to develop a benign language to discuss and make.”

¹ Montgomery, N. & bergman, c. (2017). Joyful Militancy: Building Thriving Resistance in Toxic Times. Chico, Oakland, Edinburgh, Baltimore: AK Press.

Design Tutors: İdil Karababa, Bilge Bal, Abdullah Mallah.
Collaborators of the Design Studio: Asya Yazar, Betül Özkahraman, Çağla Türkkan, Derin Akça, Ekrem Engin, Ela Oran, Elham Moussa Said Arkik, Elika Valanejad, Furkan Ayyıldız, Gizem Sarı, Hania Mustafa, Helia Khosroabadi, Jana Salem, Merve Tığlı, Pantea Janatian, Sude Çobanoğlu, Sudem Karahasan, Tutku Bülbül, Yağmur Maya Salatacı.

With special thanks to Aslıhan Demirtaş, Aslı Kıyak İngin, Simge Göksoy, Onur Kutluoğlu, Doğan Ergen, Serkan Uzel, Kurşunlu Han’s Craftsmen & Habitants and Özlem Yalım.