Bare, Naked, Nude

A Story of Modernization in Turkish Painting

Bare, Naked, Nude: A Story of Modernization in Turkish Painting aims to reveal the transformation from the Ottoman Empire into the Republican Era and how the few secretly made paintings at the turn of the 20th century created a new perspective for present times. The exhibition focuses on how artists strived to overcome the cultural resistance against artistic representations of nudity. Bare, Naked, Nude further explores: the evolution of the ‘artist’ from being a ‘subject’ to the Sultan to becoming an ‘individual,’ the pains of transitioning from one mindset to another; the struggle of identity between the artist and the ‘Muslim-Turk’; the process of establishing a new perception devoid of sexuality of the female body that was solely associated with privacy and seclusion; and the association between the modern(ized) perception of art and the nude form.

Event website