Curator: İpek Ulusoy Akgül
Consciously Curated
GÜL ILGAZ
WHISPERING SHADOW
4 November - 28 December 2025
Opening: 4 November, Tuesday, 17.00 - 20.00
The exhibition “Whispering Shadow” , which brings together Gül Ilgaz’s new works, concentrates on artistic processes inspired by nature and unfolds around the notions of embodiment, self-witnessing and attunement through movement.
Since the early 2000s, Ilgaz has worked with photography, digitally-altered images, video, and installations. For this new exhibition, the artist deepens her material and conceptual research through experiences distilled from various movement and somatic practices.
Curated by İpek Ulusoy Akgül, the exhibition comprises drawings, photographs, monoprints, fabric installations, and a performance video that share the same title as the exhibition and were produced by Ilgaz between 2024 and 2025. These works serve as an extension of the artist’s personal experiences, which form the core of her artistic practice.
At the heart of this two-story exhibition at Merdiven Art Space lies the dynamic relationship between the experimental use of photography, performance, and representation. Ilgaz’s recent works carry traces of the Aegean landscape, the artist’s own body, along with the leaves and shadows of an olive tree, inviting the viewer into a field of empathetic resonance.
The artist’s depiction of an olive branch shadow that fell on her sketch book during a mindful moment after movement, the transformation of the photographic image of the leaves collected by Ilgaz and the multi-layering of visual language with her own body images, evoke a poetic representation of the spontaneous and the intuitive.
The site-specific performance video, which reinterprets an original performance during an authentic movement workshop and reenacted at Merdiven Art Space, is also presented to the public for the first time in this exhibition.Taking movement and nature as the starting point of artistic creation, “Whispering Shadow” presents the synthesis of mourning and joy through the symbolism of the olive tree, representing the dissolution of old forms and the deep regeneration of life.
Gül Ilgaz (b. 1962, İstanbul) is an artist whose practice revolves around photography,
video and installation. Ilgaz was deeply influenced by the art scene of Paris where she
lived in 1981. In 1998, she graduated from the Painting department of Mimar Sinan
University which she entered upon her return to Turkey. She later completed the Writing
and Thinking Program at Bard College (1992) and the Banff Center’s artist residency
program (2004). In addition to the 50th Venice Biennial’s Turkish Pavilion, Ilgaz’s works
have been exhibited in various international exhibitions in Europe, the US and Asia.
‘A
Momentary Absence’ (Galerist, 2023) and 11th Biennale Hors Normes (Lyon, 2025) can be
considered among her most recent exhibitions. Having taught art at Robert College for
many years, Ilgaz is also featured in many leading public and private collections
including Istanbul Modern. https://www.gulilgaz.com/
The public event in conjunction with the exhibition will be announced from the
Consciously Curated ve Merdiven Art Space Instagram accounts.
An artist book, featuring the exhibition curator İpek Ulusoy Akgül’s extended curatorial
text, will be available in Turkish and English in the upcoming months.
The artist and the curator would sincerely like to thank the following for their support:
Abdurrahman Cebeci, Berkan Çanta, Bihter Yasemin Adalı, Buket Alper, Erdal Önder,
Esra Kent, Hakan Çarmıklı, Ergin Taşçı, Hatice Cenik, Jotun, Nazlı Büyükkeskin, Özlem
Kaleli, Sena Çakır İmer, Sevim Sancaktar, Sibel Horada, Suzan Batu, Verda Tınmaz, Wael
Hattar
