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Portrait of an artist: İnci Eviner

Monica Fritz meets a pioneer for whom ‘creativity is power’

By Monica Fritz | March 8, 2018


A star in the international contemporary art world, İnci Eviner has done much to transform Turkish contemporary art. She spoke to me of her great hope for the future as we drank tea in her high-ceilinged loft studio, hidden in the back streets of Hasköy on the Golden Horn. If...
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Silent witness

Üsküdar’s ancient planes

By Monica Fritz | March 4, 2018


Deep in Üsküdar, up on a hill overlooking the sea next to the famous barracks where Florence Nightingale nursed the sick and the dying of another pointless war, lies the Baroque Selimiye Mosque and its garden, now stark and into the pre-spring pruning season. John Freely describes the garden as...
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Welcome to Hampstead’s careful lokanta

By Andrew Finkel and Monica Fritz | February 26, 2018


Turkish cuisine is enjoying a new wave of popularity in Britain but for the last decade residents of London’s Hampstead have been nurturing deep affection for a modest but careful ‘lokanta’ at the entrance to the Heath. Zara takes its name after the small district in the eastern province of...
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Shevaun Mizrahi

It's not for the faint-hearted but Monica Fritz finds poetry in Distant Constellations at !F

By Monica Fritz | February 24, 2018


Shevaun Mizrahi's film Distant Constellations is a poetic rendition of life, hope and dreams portrayed in two different Istanbul realities, through conversations with the elderly in the Bomonti Sisters of the Poor home and construction workers building a skyscraper next door. Mizrahi herself is of mixed descent, Turkish and American,...
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Life goes on… but sometimes badly

Monica Fritz meets Salih Demirci, director of Cano

By Monica Fritz | February 24, 2018

​Salih Demirci's first film Cano is a story of a schoolteacher named Ibrahim and his search for a missing friend, Cano. Ibrahim is portrayed beautifully by the director himself who is also a schoolteacher. A portrait of a lost man and a man lost. ​The search for a friend became...
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The unexpected Kamikaze 1989

The !f Istanbul Independent Film Festival delivers surprises

By Cornucopia UK | February 22, 2018


This week, I walked into a movie blind. The !f Istanbul Independent Film Festival is ongoing through this weekend, and I’ve been determined to catch as many film screenings as I can fit into my schedule. This time, I showed up at the cinema alone and in ignorance. I hadn’t...
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Ergun Çağatay (1937–2018)

By Cornucopia | February 17, 2018


It is with utmost sadness that we must report the loss this week of Ergun Çağatay, one of Turkey's great photographers (portrait by Ali Bayram). Ergun Çağatay captured numerous iconic photographs of the Bosphorus and Anatolia, but his most celebrated legacy will be his magnum opus, The Turkic Speaking Peoples,...
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Saving Lady Mary

Important NPG portrait needs conserving

By Cornucopia UK | February 17, 2018


The National Portrait Gallery in London is trying to raise £6,900 to conserve an important painting of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the eighteenth-century poet and author of Travels in Turkey, which inspired many European writers and artists, such as Ingres, not least for her description of her experiences of a...
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Digital art makes some Noise

From projections to GIFs, this exhibition elevates innovative art

By Cornucopia UK | February 14, 2018


On one of these grey Istanbul winter days, I took the metro way out to Maslak to chase a rumour about a particularly bright and exciting exhibition. Spiraling two floors down in Orjin Maslak and turning a sharp corner, I entered a large white room that flickered and flashed with...
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Kadıköy’s forgotten wonder

The Kadıköy Cinema

By Monica Fritz | February 11, 2018


Slightly down the street from The Süreyya Opera house, hidden away in a pasaj cluttered with gaudy shops, is the wonderful Kadikoy Cinema, built in 1967 and in store for some unknown changes. This week you can still see Fatih Akın's latest film, In the Fade, and enjoy the cinema,...
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St Stephens on the Golden Horn

Monica’s meanderings

By Monica Fritz | February 3, 2018


The once rusting St Stephen of the Bulgars in Balat has opened its doors again after years of silence and then restoration. This extraordinary structure now gleams from tip to toe, with the Fener/Balat weekend crowds of local tourists pouring in. The church was made of cast iron in Vienna,...
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X is for…

A memorable London must-see

By Cornucopia UK | February 3, 2018


The mid-19th century Alphabet of London includes this entry, and shows the importance of the British Museum's collection from the Lycian city of Xanthos.  Elgin's marbles don't get a mention. This comes from the Bishopsgate Institute in London. Xanthos features in Barnaby Rogerson and Rose Baring's article on the Lycean...
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All the fun of the fair

A cornucopia at The London Antique Rug & Textile Art Fair

By Cornucopia UK | January 25, 2018


The Decorative Antiques and Textiles Winter Fair in London’s Battersea Park is in full swing, with 150 exhibitors putting a huge variety of items on display. In the upstairs mezzanine the gloriously colourful world of LARTA, the London Antique Rug & Textile Fair, spreads out its wares. Pictured here is...
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Baroque on the Bosphorus

A Sunday afternoon at the splendid Hekimbaşı Salih Efendi Yalı

By Cornucopia UK | January 17, 2018


Hekimbaşı Salih Efendi Yalı perches like a queen’s ruby underneath the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge, the object of envy for casual boaters who dream of residing in summer mansions. From the back, it hides behind the stone wall that rims the main seaside road past Anadolu Hisarı. With the clouds...
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Princes Islands’ most endangered building

Europa Nostra puts the Greek Orphanage on a short list

By Cornucopia UK | January 17, 2018


The Greek Orphanage on Büyükada, formerly Prinkipo, largest of the Princes Islands, is one of 12 heritage sites shortlisted for the ‘7 Most Endangered’ programme for 2018, just announced by Europa Nova, at the start of the new European Year of Cultural Heritage. The story of the Greek Orphanage, built...
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Weekend gallery guide: Unexpected Textures

The tactile exhibitions taking over Karaköy

By Cornucopia UK | January 12, 2018


The new space housing four galleries (with one more across the way) in Karaköy allows the terrific experience of a different artistic thrill on every floor. I was struck by how many of these exhibitions don’t seem to translate to photographs; the textures and intricacies are best experienced up close....
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Antiques (and not quite): the Üsküdar flea market

Monica's meanderings (cont.)

By Monica Fritz | December 10, 2017


Uskudar's flea market is one, or maybe even the last, of the bazaars in Istanbul where a bargain is still to be found. On a Saturday afternoon the empty shops and busier workshops have a sleepy atmosphere – a shopkeeper actually remembered me from when I bought my first furniture...
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Feeling Right at Home in Salon

A Day at One of Istanbul’s Hottest Venues

By Ezgi Üstündağ | December 4, 2017


When I walked into Salon IKSV on November 10, ceramic mug and notebook in hand, it was the first time I’d ever seen it empty. The brightly-lit room–a dark grey floor connecting the small stage on one end to the sound booth and bar stocked on the other, with stairs...
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Turning an old leaf at sad, abandoned Haydarpaşa Station

The Haydarpaşa old books festival

By Monica Fritz | December 3, 2017


Today, December 3, is the last day of the Haydarpasa Sahaf Festival, an alternative way to browse second-hand books on the first track of the semi-abandoned, mythical train station jutting out into the Bosphorus that once served travellers to far-off destinations across Asia from Baghdad to Tehran. You can still...
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Weekend gallery guide: Odysseys and Oracles

Ai Weiwei's provocative porcelain works

By Cornucopia UK | November 23, 2017


The Biennial has wrapped up but there’s still plenty of art to see in the city. If you were too busy exploring Biennial events to see some of the other notable exhibits, now is your chance. Ai Weiwei On Porcelain at Sakıp Sabancı Museum, Emirgan The Chinese artist and provocateur...
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