Fundamentally Human

A Question of Taste exhibition brings together works of thirteen artists and collectives and deals with the concept of kitsch, and the intimate relationship this concept has established with today's visual culture as well as its critical role in shaping taste.

In the second event that will take place on April 16, the first performance of the night will bring together Debora İpekel and Ece Düzgit’s music with İpek Hamzaoğlu’s visuals.

Istanbul Research Institute and Pera Museum organize Istanbul Unbound: Environmental Approaches to the City, an international, virtual conference that seeks to offer new insights on the complex layers of Istanbul’s urban landscape, to be held on April 8–11, 2021. 

Pera Museum presents virtual event series “Stage of Plastic Dreams” in collaboration with HYPERCORTEX and with the support of the British Council. Organized in parallel to the A Question of Taste exhibition, the “Stage of Plastic Dreams” event series brings musicians and visual artists together in a virtual event space open to participants.

Pera Museum presents virtual event series “Stage of Plastic Dreams” in collaboration with HYPERCORTEX and with the support of the British Council. Organized in parallel to the A Question of Taste exhibition, the “Stage of Plastic Dreams” event series brings musicians and visual artists together in a virtual event space open to participants.

Pera Museum’s talk and performance series Electronic Crossovers invites you to explore the fields that interact with electronic music!

Pera Museum’s talk and performance series Electronic Crossovers invites you to explore the fields that interact with electronic music!

Focusing on contemporary approaches to miniature painting, the exhibition Miniature 2.0: Miniature in Contemporary Art brings together the works of 14 artists from different countries such as Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan. The artists do not treat miniature solely as a historical object, they emphasize its theoretical potential as a contemporary art form. 

Focusing on contemporary approaches to miniature painting, the exhibition Miniature 2.0: Miniature in Contemporary Art brings together the works of 14 artists from different countries such as Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan. The artists do not treat miniature solely as a historical object, they emphasize its theoretical potential as a contemporary art form.

The talk will focus on how the relationship between miniature painting and contemporary art in Turkey developed with particular emphasis on CANAN’s works in the exhibition and on the current forms into which miniature painting has evolved with an interdisciplinary approach that transcends periods. 

The photographs exclusively produced for A Road Story exhibition by Laleper Aytek in Syros Island, Yusuf Sevinçli in Larnaca and Rhodes and Alp Sime in Çanakkale and Istanbul will be compared and contrasted in terms of their style, content and technique. 

At the 180th anniversary of the invention of photography and the first photography trip that took place in 1839, A Road Story: 180 Years of Photography exhibition brings together interpretations and perspectives of photographers who explore the same route with today’s techniques. The talk featuring Coşkun Aral and Yekta Kopan, which will be organized as part of the exhibition, focuses on Aral's exhibited photographs of Mount Sinai, Gaza, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Nablus, Sidon, Deir el-Qamar, Damascus and Tripoli as well as his experiences in those places.

In this talk within the scope of the exhibition, Murat Germen and Evrim Altuğ will be touching upon different themes such as the exploitation instruments and methods employed by the system dominating the world, and how local culture can be preserved under the overwhelming pressure of globalization, on the basis of the photographic works produced by Germen in various parts of Alexandria, Cairo, Luxor and Suez for the exhibition A Road Story.

At the 180th anniversary of invention of photography and the first photography trip that took place in 1839, A Road Story: 180 Years of Photography exhibition brings together interpretations and perspectives of photographers who explore the same route with today’s techniques. As part of exhibition, an exhibition tour with the curator Engin Özendes will be organized on January 19, at 19.00.

For the first talk of the exhibition, curator Engin Özendes will be in conversation with Ali Borovalı and Cem Turgay.

At the 180th anniversary of invention of photography and the first photography trip that took place in 1839, A Road Story: 180 Years of Photography exhibition brings together interpretations and perspectives of photographers who explore the same route with today’s techniques. As part of exhibition, an exhibition tour with the curator Engin Özendes will be organized on January 19, at 19.00.

Pera Film presents a retrospective selection of the films of Tomer Heymann, a documentary producer and director whose films focus exclusively on the human in their search for truth. The program Chosen Families: Tomer Heymann focuses on the director’s six documentary films that explore with an honest and sensitive perspective the concept of family, the ones we are born in and the ones we choose, and the feelings that arise from being together.

Pera Museum presents a talk on the video installation For All the Time, for All the Sad Stones, inspired by the Anatolian Weights and Measures Collection. According to the philosopher Marquis de Condorcet, the metric system which was presented in 1799 in France, was “for all people for all time”. The metric unit for mass, the kilogram was modeled based on a platinium-iridium object in 1889. However, the weight of this object changed 50 micrograms in the past 129 years. The International Bureau of Weights and Measures organized a summit to discuss the future of the metric system In November 2018. Kilogram is now standardized according to the Planck constant.

As part of “New Sounds”, a musical project inspired by Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation collections, the composition titled Rudan’s Coffee Break invites the audience to explore the main character Rudan’s mind, with the inspiration it takes from coffee’s adventure, from the bean to the cup. 

Pera Museum presents Movement of the Line / Line of the Movement, a workshop-performance program that will be held at the exhibition floor as part of the Out of Ink: Interpretations from Chinese Contemporary Art exhibit. 

Belonging and Companionship presents a selection of Aykan Safoğlu’s video and films that he produced between 2013 – 2015. An immigrant himself, Safoğlu traces loss, death, belonging and relationships in his art practice.

As part of the exhibition Out of Ink: Interpretations from Chinese Contemporary Art, Pera Museum presents a talk by the academic and curator Beth McKillop, who contributed to the exhibition’s catalogue with an essay. 

As part of the exhibition “Out of Ink: Interpretations from Chinese Contemporary Art”, Pera Museum presents a talk by the artist Xu Bing, who participates in the exhibition with his installation Background Story: Summer Mountains.

As part of the exhibition Out of Ink: Interpretations from Chinese Contemporary Art, Pera Museum presents a talk by the curator Karen Smith in conversation with the artists Tang Bohua, Jian-Jun Zhang and Zhou Fan.

As part of “New Sounds”, a musical project inspired by Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation collections, Alican Çamcı makes a sound documentary inspired by the changing face of Istanbul as well as his own personal relationship to the city. 

In a talk as part of The Time Needs Changing exhibition, artist and academic Şeref Erol will explore the idea of “time as the enabler of our facilities, or in other words, our creations or conceptualizations” through correlations drawn with formal sciences (logic, mathematics) and philosophy.

Pera Museum’s The Time Needs Changing series of events continue with readings on the theme of “time” organized in collaboration with altZine.

As part of “New Sounds”, a musical project inspired by Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation collections, “Experiments with Measures”, is a musical experiment inspired by the Anatolian Weights and Measures Collection and designed with an analytical perspective. 

Prof. Dr. Kaan H. Ökten, lecturer at the Department of Philosophy, Mimar Sinan Fine Art University will take an “inside look” at the existential perspectives of time and explore the domains and possibilities of being in his talk as part of The Time Needs Changing exhibition.

Geographer and film critic Jean Radvanyi is giving a talk as part of “Parajanov with Sarkis” exhibition, exploring Parajanov’s cinema in the Soviet context. Sergey Parajanov was born in 1924, in a family of Armenian merchants in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia.

Pera Museum, invites you to see The Time Needs Changing, an exhibition questioning our geo-politically controlled notions of time, with its curator Alistair Hicks and artist Nilbar Güreş!

The Time Needs Changing presents a thought-scape that draws from three different parts of the world; China, Turkey and India. The artists explore time through drawing, video, photography, installation and new media.

Raqs Media Collective, whose works Escapement (2009), Re-run (2013), Emperor’s Old Clothes Maquette (2016) and Hollowgram (2017) are shown as part of “The Time Needs Changing” exhibition at Pera Museum, will be talking about concepts they’ve been working on recently as well as their recent projects. The exhibition’s curator Alistair Hicks will be in conversation with Raqs following the talk.

As part of “New Sounds”, a musical project inspired by Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation collections, “Sohbet I Korero” is a spontaneous dialogue between the fine arts and music, celebrating the free spirit of improvisation and the pure delight of experimentation.

Join curator Çelenk Bafra, artists Ali Kazma and Burak Delier as well as art historian Prof. Dr. Tarkan Okçuoğlu for a talk in relation to Pera Museum’s School Square Galatasaray exhibition. 

Pera Film presents a selection of films to pay homage to Ronit Elkabetz who brought to life memorable female characters struggling for their liberty against the boundaries imposed by society. The Beyond Boundaries program presents nine films by Elkabetz which she directed or starred in. Ronit Elkabetz wrote and portrayed the role of Viviane Amsalem in the trailblazing and award-studded cinematic trilogy she created together with her brother, Shlomi Elkabetz, in 2004-2014. Shlomi Elkabetz will be in conversation following the screening of Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem at 17:00.

As part of “New Sounds”, a musical project inspired by Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation collections, the composition “Measures” by Şirin Pancaroğlu and Bora Uymaz presents instrumental music inspired by the names of weight and length measures, as well as improvised performances accompanying poetry composed by divan and folk poets on the subject. 

Pera Film presents a music performance by Adnan Teskeredžić Trio as part of Legacy of the Memory: Danis Tanović program organized in cooperation with Bosnia Sancak Academic Culture and History Foundation.

Pera Film proudly presents a selection of Bosnian director Danis Tanović’s films as part of Bosnia Sancak Culture Days. Presented as part of the program Legacy of the Memory director Tanović will be in conversation following the screening of No Man’s Land at 19:00. 

The Designer Conversations, organized over the course of the Biennial, provide an exchange platform for participating designers to share and expand on their projects and approach. 

Participating designers come together in a moderated conversation, revealing their individual processes and exploring common and differing threads in their work and practice

The format adds a discursive layer to the design biennial's exhibition and allows the audience to learn more about the works on display and the designers that created them.

Pera Museum, in collaboration with Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV), is one of the main venues for this year’s 4th Istanbul Design Biennial from 22 September to 4 November 2018.

Join us for a guided tour of the School Square Garden exhibition with the curator Çelenk Bafra. The tour will offer a unique insight to the works of the exhibition.

Art collective biriken performs around their installation “Unplugged” exhibited in Pera Museum’s School Square Galatasaray exhibition. 

Art collective biriken performs around their installation “Unplugged” exhibited in Pera Museum’s School Square Galatasaray exhibition. 

Pera Museum presents Nermin Saybaşılı, the final speaker in the talk series organized as a part of Look At Me! Portraits and Other Fictions from the “la Caixa” Contemporary Art exhibition.

Philosopher Ayşe Uslu opens a discussion on the portrait as a form of representation and its relationship with emotion and affect in art works as a part of the exhibition Look At Me! Portraits and Other Fictions from the “la Caixa” Contemporary Art.

Pera Museum presents a lecture and film event as part of the exhibition Re/Framing Louis Kahn: Photographs by Cemal Emden – Drawings and Paintings. Following the screening of the 1972 documentary Louis Kahn, Architect, Assoc. Prof. Funda Uz ve Prof. Dr. Neslihan Dostoğlu will analyze and talk about Louis Khan’s architecture, and set on a quest to discover what can be learned from him today. 

Join us for a guided tour of the Look at Me!: Portraits and Other Fictions from the ”la Caixa” Contemporary Art Collection exhibition with the curator Nimfa Bisbe Molin. The tour will offer a unique insight to the works of the exhibition.

Places are heterogeneous: A multiplicity of beings co-habit the place: humans, dogs, trees, worms, mushrooms... We are thrown-together and we will be, at different times and speeds, again dispersed. Our social setting is a bubble that draws together forms of life and materials, yet destined to burst out as we move on.

Gülşen and I met randomly at a film screening in Berlin in 2012. The coffee we drank in the foyer marked the beginning of a friendship and life-long collaboration between a gay cis-man of White Turk identity born in the West of Turkey, and a Kurdish cis-woman born in Dersim, who dedicated her life to activism and women’s work in Germany.

Chosen Families symposium, sets out from the question of ‘What happens when home ceases to be welcoming, when we leave home either voluntarily or involuntarily?’ and trails the quest for different kinds of belongings beyond family as an institution, the impact of experiences of conflict and resolution that emanates from such quests on the levels of society and sociability, as well as the role of affect in political activism.

In late 2013, Egypt made worldwide headlines when authorities detained a migratory stork traveling from Israel to Egypt because of an electronic device attached to its body. It was suspected of espionage.

Wilson’s installation, for the Istanbul Biennial, entitled Afro Kismet, includes a number of handcrafted items related to Ottoman culture and the roles of black people within it. Please join us in this conversation with the artist about the long history of black people in the region – many, if not most, with origins in the Ottoman slave trade – and today refer to themselves as Afro-Turks or Afro-Anatolians.

Join artist Nikita Alexeevfor a talk with curator Alistair Hicks, in relation to Pera Museum’s Doublethink: Double Vision exhibition. The talk will focus on Alexeev’s work “Iconostasis Tie”, which he produced specifically for the exhibition, and will also open a platform to discuss Moscow Conceptualism, a term that constitute the backbone of the exhibition. 

Join artist Ali Kazma for a talk with curator Alistair Hicks, in relation to Pera Museum’s Doublethink: Double Vision exhibition. The talk will focus on Kazma’s video in the exhibition, “House of Letters” and on the recently published book “A Voyage around Our Minds” written by Hicks and composed around the video work.  

Join artist Marko Mäetamm and curator Alistair Hicks for a talk in relation to Pera Museum’s Doublethink: Double vision exhibition.

Presented in relation to our Doublethink: Double vision exhibition, artist Marko Mäetamm will be live drawing on Pera Museum’s elevator and restroom walls openly in public.

As part of the exhibition “Doublethink: Double vision” Pera Museum is presenting a talk on Saturday May 27^th at 14:30. Moderated by curator Alistair Hicks, the talk will be accompanied by the artists Waqas Khan, RAQS Media Collective.

Presented as part of “José Sancho: Erotic Nature” exhibition, artist José Sancho will give a talk on Thursday,  May 25.

Jasmina Cibic, one of the artists of the Cold Front from the Balkans exhibition will focus on dominant themes of her work such as architecture and soft power and their mutual co-relation to national representation.

As part of Pera Museum’s performance project Look Again, the artist duo AslieMk is presented a performance entitled In Situ, based on the exhibition Coffee Break: The Adventure of Coffee in Kütahya Tiles and Ceramics. The performance aimed to turn the exhibition space into an open and functioning laboratory, taking visitors beyond a one-way visual communication in relation to the works at the museum. 

As part of Pera Museum’s performance project Look Again, Ekin Bernay’s performance 9 Stone is a reference to the Anatolian Weights and Measures collection exhibition. Active audience participation was required during this performance where Bernay will focued on questions such as the rediscovery of the relation between body and soul, the freedom of the body, and body weight. Participants hada unique experience during this performance.

As part of Pera Museum’s performance project Look Again, İ. Ata Doğruel’s performance Ambassador focuses on the exhibition Intersecting Worlds: Ambassadors and Painters based on the Orientalist Painting Collection.

Join us for a guided tour of the Cold Front from the Balkans exhibition with the co-curator Alenka Gregorič. The tour will offer a unique insight to the works of the exhibition.

Pera Film’s Forms and Politics of Yugoslav Experimental Film program brings together lesser known films made by artists in socialist Yugoslavia between 1963 and 1987. Sezgin Boynik, the curator of this program, will further discuss and contextualize the specific conditions of experimental filmmaking in socialist Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe, the historical and social situation in which they were produced.

Join artist Sislej Xhafa to discuss his work in relation to Pera Museum’s Cold Front from the Balkans exhibition.

Join artist Adrian Paci to discuss his work in relation to Pera Museum’s exhibition Cold Front from the Balkans. Paci will show his video Piktori (included in the exhibition) as well as his other videos.

As part of the exhibition Mersad Berber: An Allegory of Bosnia, Aida Abadžić Hodžić, the exhibition’s curator and art critic Edward Lucie-Smith, one of the leading art historians in Bosnia and Herzegovina, will be in conversation.

Presented as part of Cold Front From the Balkans exhibition, the artist Dušan Mandić from the artist group IRWIN will give a talk. In this talk,  Mandić focuses on the practice of the group and the NSK.

Join curator Frédéric Hitzel for a tour of the  “Félix Ziem: Wanderer on the Sea of Light” exhibition. The tour will offer a unique insight to the works of the exhibition.

As part of the exhibition Cold Front from the BalkansPera Museum is presenting a discussion with the curators Ali Akay and Alenka Gregorič and with the artists Mladen Miljanović, Lana Čmajčanin, Raša Todosijević, IRWIN and Ivan Moudov.

A musical performance will accompany the exhibition Cold Front from the Balkans. Presented as part of the exhibited video and installation piece Stranger than Paradise, artist Mark Požlep and his pianist’s performance is based on a real social environment.

Pera Film proudly presents a selection of Bosnian director Jasmila Žbanić’s films as part of Bosnia Sancak Culture Days.” Presented as part of the program Poetry of Reality Director Žbanić will be in conversation following the screening of Love Island at 14:00.

Join curators Fatma Çolakoğlu and Ulya Soley for a tour of the Katherine Behar: Data’s Entry exhibition. The tour will offer a unique insight to the works of the exhibition.

As part of Katherine Behar’s exhibition, a performance titled Data’s Entry will take place on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. 

Presented as part of Katherine Behar: Data’s Entry exhibition, the artist Katherine Behar will give a talk titled “Optimized, not Optimistic”. In this talk, Behar presents her artwork and discusses the often confounding and sometimes rebellious ways that people and technologies manage to coexist in digital labor.

Artist Bahia Shehab will give a talk titled “Excavating the Future.” This event is presented in conjunction to the Jameel Prize 4 exhibition organised by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London in partnership with Art Jameel, and in collaboration with the Pera Museum.

Join curators Salma Tuqan and Tim Stanley for a tour of the Jameel Prize 4 exhibition organised by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London in partnership with Art Jameel, and in collaboration with the Pera Museum. The tour will offer a unique insight into the works of the exhibition.

On Wednesday, June 8, artist Shahpour Pouyan will give a talk. Presented in conjunction to the Jameel Prize 4 exhibition organised by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London in partnership with Art Jameel, and in collaboration with the Pera Museum.

Pera Film hosts a series of events in the context of the 35th Istanbul Film Festival, organized by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (IKSV). As part of the event series, Necati Sönmez, Reyan Tuvi, Can Candan come together with moderator Tül Akbal for a panel discussion on Saturday, April 16^th at 17:00.

Pera Film hosts a series of events in the context of the 35th Istanbul Film Festival, organized by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (IKSV). As part of Festival Talks, Suzan Avcı and Murathan Mungan come together on Wednesday, April 13th at 16:30.

Pera Film hosts a series of events in the context of the 35th Istanbul Film Festival, organized by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (IKSV). As part of Festival Talks, Gianfranco Rosi, Jakob Brossmann and Melis Behlil come together on Sunday, April 10^th at 18:00.

Pera Film hosts a series of events in the context of the 35th Istanbul Film Festival, organized by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (IKSV). “Burak Göral’s Guide to Selecting Films for Children” workshop will be held on Saturday, April 9^th at 13:00.

Pera Film hosts a series of events in the context of the 35th Istanbul Film Festival, organized by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (IKSV). As part of Festival Talks, Ali Kazma and Mari Spirito come together on Saturday, April 9^th at 16:00.

Pera Museum in collaboration with the Consulate General of Italy in İstanbul and Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Istanbul is presenting a series of talks as part of the Giorgio de Chirico: The Enigma of the World exhibition.

Paula and Karol are a Warsaw-based band who have been capturing the hearts of young and old alike, across Poland and abroad.

Pera Film hosts Polish duo SzaZa for a special concert, held in paralel to the film program Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.

Founded by Pawel Romanczuk in 2006, Małe Instrumenty (Small Instruments) are a band exploring new sounds using a wide array of small instruments. 

As a result of its geographical location, Poland has always been in close contact with Eastern cultures. Coupled with the Orientalist tendencies of the 19th century, this cultural interaction has led to original outcomes in various fields of art and life. The "Orientalism in Polish Art" Symposium aims to examine these outcomes.

James Warhola was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1955. A large influence during his childhood was his artistic family, especially his famous uncle, Pop artist-Andy Warhol. 

In conjunction with the exhibition Aurora: Contemporary Nordic Glass Art, Asa Jungnelius, a remarkable name from Sweden’s young generation of artists, will be in conversation with art critic Ahu Antmen.