For our 425th art meeting, we visit the Zeyrek Tiled Bathhouse with 22 artists and its curator Anlam De Coster, who took part in the “Healing of Remains” exhibition after 13 years of painstaking restoration. Zeyrek Tiled Bath, one of the first and largest baths built by Mimar Sinan in Istanbul in the 1540s, makes an important contribution to the cultural heritage of the city. Following the conservation and restoration works carried out by The Marmara Group since 2010, The Çinili Hamam started to operate as a museum-bath complex under the name The Çinili Hamam in 2023. In addition to the bath, the renovated complex includes a museum, historical Byzantine cisterns and garden areas. The Çinili Hamam in Zeyrek, one of the four districts of Istanbul included in the UNESCO World Heritage list as part of its historical sites, is considered one of the architectural examples that best reflects the city's Byzantine, Roman and Ottoman historical and cultural heritage. One floor of the museum houses Iznik tiles found during restoration. The exhibition “The Healing of Remains” emphasizes the archaeological aspects of the restoration process and offers visitors the opportunity to experience this cultural heritage. Curated by Anlam Arslanoğlu de Coster, the exhibition is inspired by the 13-year restoration process of the hammam, which turned into an archaeological excavation.
The Healing of Ruins explores the possibility that the layers exposed during the restoration of historical ruins can transform us on a personal and social level.
Among the 22 artists participating in the exhibition, Francesco Albano, Adrian Geller, Alice Guittard, Başak Günak, Maryam Hoseini, Ahmet Doğu İpek, Lara Ögel, Zoë Paul, Daniel Silver, Panos Tsagaris, Ezgi Türksoy and Elif Uras create new site-specific works that respond to the history, mythology and architecture of the baths. The exhibition also includes works by Erol Akyavaş, Mehtap Baydu, Hera Büyüktaşçıyan, Dorothy Cross, Candeğer Furtun, Cecilia Granara, Renée Levi, Maude Maris, Ayça Telgeren and Marion Verboom.
Tuesday, October 3
13.00-14.00