A forgotten woman of the Republic: 'Melek Celâl in All Her Aspects' exhibition opens to visitors
The Sakıp Sabancı Museum's new exhibition, 'A Forgotten Woman of the Republic: Melek Celâl in All Her Aspects,' has opened to visitors.
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The Sabancı University Sakıp Sabancı Museum continues its series of monographic exhibitions that offer a perspective on artists and works of significant importance in Turkish painting, this time focusing on Melek Celâl, one of the pioneering female artists of the late Ottoman Empire and the early Republic period.
The 'A Forgotten Woman of the Republic: Melek Celâl in All Her Aspects' exhibition will be open for visitors at SSM from December 26, 2023, to April 28, 2024.
SHEDDING LIGHT ON HER LIFE
The exhibition focuses on the life and art of Melek Celâl, the female artist who first displayed nude works at the Galatasaray Exhibitions in 1924 and opened her first solo exhibition in 1935.
The exhibition consists of an archive featuring the multi-faceted artist's paintings and sketches, designs inspired by Anatolian motifs, articles, critiques, and books she wrote on urban planning, calligraphy, and Turkish embroidery, as well as photographs, postcards, memoirs, and letters that shed light on her life.
Offering a look at the life and works of Melek, one of the pioneering female representatives of the first generation of modern artists who were born in the Ottoman Empire at the end of the 19th century and continued their lives in the Republic of Turkey, the exhibition contains clues about how the modernization process was experienced in a country undergoing radical changes.
Like many artists of the early Republican period, the life of Melek Celâl, who was raised with the cultural accumulation of a wealthy Ottoman family in Istanbul, reveals not only the story of a forgotten painter of an era but also the cultural panorama of the late Ottoman and early Republican periods.
The exhibition also includes the scientific analysis study 'Melek Celâl Beyond the Visible,' which sheds light on Melek Celâl's technique, the restoration work her pieces have undergone, and the structure and texture of the materials she used.