Ani Çelik Arevyan
In a Dream
Merdiven Art Space
08 January – 21 February 2026
Ani Çelik Arevyan meets the audience with her solo exhibition In a Dream, composed of photographs of her “Glass Bodies” series produced within the scope of her recent body of work Past–Present Tense.
Arevyan’s photographic practice extends beyond visual narration, unfolding as a conceptual field that investigates transitions between body, memory, and time. Blurring the boundaries between photography and sculpture, the artist reconstructs a narrative rooted in her personal past through light, material, and space. The exhibition centers on the dualities of transience and durability, visibility and concealment.
In the artist’s practice, glass functions as a carrier of memory through its simultaneously fragile and resilient nature. The light passing through the glass bodies does not fix the form; instead, it multiplies it. The shadows cast onto the ground open up an autonomous narrative space, detached from the body itself.
The artist describes this process as follows:
“My relationship with light is nourished less by the desire to illuminate what is visible than by the urge to reveal what is hidden. In this context, glass bodies are not merely forms for me; they are permeable beings that carry the memory of light as it passes through them, fractures, and multiplies. Their elongated shadows on the ground transform into narratives independent of the bodies themselves.
These shadows do not imitate the brilliance of glass; on the contrary, they act as its silent counterpart. As light passes through the glass, it loses its clarity, multiplies, and at times darkens. The resulting shadow ceases to be a direct representation of form and becomes a trace, a remembrance, even an inner vibration.”
In a Dream approaches photography not merely as a documentary medium, but as a sensory and contemplative surface. The exhibition offers a multilayered experience that invites viewers to wander through a dreamlike time-space, suspended between traces of the past and possibilities of the future.
The exhibition can be visited at Merdiven Art Space between 08 January and 21 February 2026.