TEZCAN KARAKUŞ CANDAN

Galeri Soyut Çankaya is hosting Tezcan Karakuş Candan’s exhibition titled “Unforgettable Space of Memory: Atatürk Forest Farm” between June 11 - 25, 2025.

Known for her identity as an artist, architect, and writer, Tezcan Karakuş Candan reinterprets Atatürk Forest Farm, one of the symbolic spaces of the Republic, through its place in both our individual and social memory. Transporting the centenary history, transformation, and resistance of AOÇ onto her canvas, Candan brings the poetic imagery of the space together with art lovers through a contemporary visuality.

Candan’s works are not only a visual expression; they also serve as a call to remember, preserve, and carry into the future. Aiming to make visible the valuable spaces of memory that have become invisible within urban life or are sought to be forgotten, this exhibition highlights the transformative power of art and its contribution to social memory.

Having conducted studies on art, architecture, and urban culture for many years, Candan draws attention to the founding ideals of modern Türkiye and the spatial representations of these ideals through Atatürk Forest Farm in this exhibition.

UNFORGETTABLE SPACE OF MEMORY: ATATÜRK FOREST FARM

In our country's modernization process that began with the Republic, Atatürk Forest Farm is the most important space of memory representing Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s vision of contemporary urban and agricultural planning. It has been not only a production and agricultural area, but also the pioneer of a new culture and way of life. Its memory is a space filled with unique imagery for a century. A monumental area with the structures within it and the memories in our social memory.

This space, which Atatürk donated and entrusted to his nation, has been experiencing its unhappiest times for years as a significant portion of its lands has been opened to zoning and reduced through construction in the recent period of its centenary history. In the face of this situation, through practices of ownership, preservation, and resistance; non-governmental organizations, writers, artists, science and culture figures have created documentaries, written articles, organized exhibitions, filed lawsuits, held conferences, and protested. In the 100th year of its establishment, they presented distinguished examples of reminding us once again of Atatürk Forest Farm, of not forgetting it, and of protecting not only its past, but also its present and future. Taking a pioneering role among all these practices, architect/writer/artist Tezcan Karakuş Candan also maintained a very special, holistic stance at home and abroad during the 100th anniversary events of AOÇ, through her writings, the documentary film she prepared, the conferences she attended, and the painting exhibition she curated.

In her exhibition at Galeri Soyut, by transforming the spatial imagery of AOÇ in our social and individual memory into a poetic visuality within her painting, she touches our inner selves with the emotions created by a centennial icon. By building bridges with yesterday, she makes us feel through her art the necessity of protecting modern Türkiye's founding ideology and the symbolic memory space of the Republic. She creates a new, brand-new pictorial memory with a style of her own.

Previously, in an exhibition I curated, she had offered art lovers a visual feast by wandering through the pictorial memory of the majestic and iconic structures within the city, created through the Enlightenment of the Republic, as if they were statues.

This exhibition complements the previous one. Once again, amidst the monotony of urban life and the absent-mindedness of our gaze, it presents an exhibition laden with visual records of creating a new memory by voicing and recalling a very precious space of memory that we have passed by who knows how many times and which is sought to be forgotten.

İbrahim Karaoğlu - Art Writer/Curator