In The Dark Times

Istanbul’s Seaside Leisure: Nostalgia from Sea Baths to Beaches exhibition brought together photographs, magazines, comics, objects, and books from various private and institutional collections, and told a nostalgic story while also addressing the change and socialization of the norms of how Istanbulites used their free time. Istanbul’s Seaside Leisure was a documentary testament of the radical transformations in the Republic’s lifestyle. 

The exhibition “Look At Me! Portraits and Other Fictions from the ”la Caixa” Contemporary Art Collection” examined portraiture, one of the oldest artistic genres, through a significant number of works of our times. Paintings, photographs, sculptures and videos shaped a labyrinth of gazes that invite spectators to reflect themselves in the social mirror of portraits.

1638, the year Louis XIV was born –his second name, Dieudonné, alluding to his God-given status– saw the diffusion of a cult of maternity encouraged by the very devout Anne of Austria, in thanks for the miracle by which she had given birth to an heir to the French throne. Simon François de Tours (1606-1671) painted the Queen in the guise of the Virgin Mary, and the young Louis XIV as the infant Jesus, in the allegorical portrait now in the Bishop’s Palace at Sens.