In March 2018, Volkan Aslan—an artist known for his tongue-in-cheek ready-made sculptures and thoughtful essay films on city life—began a correspondence with Elif Kamışlı, the Istanbul Biennial’s exhibition manager, to share experiences and ponder Turkey’s oppressive state of affairs. The two pen pals, both in their mid-thirties, had witnessed art patrons and colleagues imprisoned or exiled during the traumatizing purge that followed the attempted coup in 2016. The letters show the writers feeling drowned in Istanbul and articulate a shared sense of being left behind. The correspondence became