Falname
CANAN

Performance

November 24 - January 13, 2021

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. Exhibiting her works May 1, Adams and Eves, Beauty and the Beast (Lion and Gazelle), Exemplary (İbretnüma) and Falname, CANAN delivers a performance based on her work Falname, which consists of 71 miniatures inspired by the characters in Islamic mythology. In her Falname performance, CANAN imagines fortune-telling as a participatory performance realm. The artist transforms fortune-telling as a ritual into a participatory and game-like experience in her Falname performances which she delivers in verbal engagement with the audience.

Commenting on her performance series, CANAN says: “The fortune teller draws and lays down cards according to various spreads at any time while abiding by the fortune-telling ritual, and can come up with an interpretation/prediction for the person seeking answers by looking at the images on the cards. The practice of interpreting, feeling and analyzing a work of art is actually quite similar to fortune telling, in that an artwork evokes a sense of hope in the audience as they make out a meaning by looking at the shapes and colors. Our minds construct the present using our past experiences and dreams of the future. We can make our dreams come true when we embrace a positive outlook by not drowning in the negative experiences of the past and not getting fixated on our concerns for the future.”

The Falname series, reproduced as a limited-edition tarot deck, is offered for sale at Pera Museum in parallel with the performances.

Visitors can attend the performance by purchasing a Pera Museum entrance ticket. The performance is in Turkish. Participation is limited; reservation is required.

Temporary Exhibition

Miniature 2.0

Focusing on contemporary approaches to miniature painting, the exhibition brought together the works of 14 artists from different countries such as Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan. 

Miniature 2.0

Turquerie

Turquerie

Having penetrated the Balkans in the fourteenth century, conquered Constantinople in the fifteenth, and reached the gates of Vienna in the sixteenth, the Ottoman Empire long struck fear into European hearts. 

A Solitary Eagle in the Sinai Desert

A Solitary Eagle in the Sinai Desert

John Frederick Lewis is considered one of the most important British Orientalist artists of the Victorian era. Pera Museum exhibited several of Lewis’ paintings as part of the Lure of the East exhibition in 2008 organized in collaboration with Tate Britain.

The Search for Form

The Search for Form

A series of small and rather similar nudes Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu and Eren Eyüboğlu produced in the early 1930s almost resemble a ‘visual conversation’ that focus on a pictorial search. It is also possible to find the visual reflections of this earlier search in the synthesis Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu reached with his stylistic abstractions in the 1950s.