“Hala bekliyorum” (I’m still waiting), says a framed photograph of street graffiti upon entering Çağrı Saray’s solo exhibition. This writing appears in the photo Still Waiting, (all works cited, 2014), on a distinct layer of gray paint of the kind that municipality workers in Istanbul use to cover such graffiti evincing two of the main concerns Saray brings together in this exhibition—erasure and anticipation.
At first sight, the rest of the gallery seems to be filled with large, framed pieces of blank paper. Upon closer inspection, though, these reveal representations of architecture and culture in the modern state of Turkey—the regal front gate of Istanbul University, the Atatürk Cultural Center, Atatürk’s mausoleum, the national flag—all intricately etched as white lines on the white paper. Part of a series titled “Memory Spaces,” these etchings represent heavily contested sites of cultural and political significance in the power struggle between the old guard of the republic as instituted in 1923 and the current neo-Ottoman government, which proclaims a “new Turkey.”
Saray’s masterful engagement with space as a metaphor for ideological demarcations that entrap as well as exclude runs throughout this exhibition, as in the video feeling like . . ., in which a repetitive echo is created by a male figure throwing stones through a scenic forest into an invisible wall. While the landscape and chirping birds initially give a sense of freedom and tranquility, the repetitive failure of the action produces a contradicting sense of entrapment and helplessness.
