Canvas

Phantoms, as they appear, leave only traces for us to remember. As they linger, we extend their afterlives. We resist their erasures in our reclamation. We stage a quartet in their memory. We clap when the curtains close. We thank the maestro for letting us hear the music again. In Phantom Quartet, Hera Büyüktaşcıyan conducts an orchestra of resistance. She becomes a maestro to a choir of phantoms to harmonise from within, towards and against history.

Perhaps it was the weather, but Phantom Quartet hummed a heavy gloom. Tensions were palpable. Büyüktaşcıyan used Arter’s location, Dolapdere district, as a lever. The museum sits at ground zero for Istanbul’s most aggressive urban renewal projects. The hollowed-out architectures in the exhibition mirror the aftermath of Türkiye’s Law No. 5366 (Law on Conservation by Renovation and Use by Revitalisation of the Deteriorated Historical and Cultural Immovable Property), which authorised the seizure and gutting of nineteenth-century properties for new-money interiors. Each work, throughout the exhibition, became a verse to critique: an aggressive tête-à-tête dressed as a poetic dialogue.

Centred on the organising principle of quartets, the installations use discarded materials to manifest the city’s phantoms. By exploring the concept of spolia, in which the remnants of demolished buildings are salvaged and repurposed in new structures, the artist examines how migration and memory endure despite physical loss. She seeks historical ruptures in renamed streets, piecing together lingering parts and debris foraged from dried-up rivers and demolished buildings. She constructs an abstract graveyard using geotextiles, filters and industrial carpets, its uneven depths questioning the nature of a hole and turning urban patterns into rhythmic scores that hold the ground’s memory.