There is excitement in Istanbul’s art circuit today for a very fresh yet profoundly layered exhibition that opens its doors. Simbart Projects hosts the group show titled “Geçerken Bırakılan” (“Left in Passing”) from 16 January to 28 February, bringing together works by Metin Katırcılar, Maya Kurdoğlu, Sanem Odabaşı, and Merve Zeybek. The exhibition questions the delicate bond between nature and memory, how recollections shift shape over time, and how the concept of identity is reshaped within this very fluidity.
Here, memory is not a static record stored in the mind; rather, it appears as a process that moves from figure to object, from fabric to soil, multiplies when shared, and is reconstructed with every act of recollection.
Erased Silhouettes and Whispering Memories
In his “Hafıza Yüzeyleri” (“Memory Surfaces”) series, Metin Katırcılar invites us from the dusty pages of family albums into the voids of memory. By leaving the figures in family photographs as absences (silhouettes) while making the patterns of the surrounding objects more prominent, the artist points to the increasingly transparent nature of memory over time and to the fact that the past is sometimes preserved less in a face than in the texture of a room or the pattern of a curtain. The act of remembering detaches itself from representation and turns into the visual codes that surround us.
Maya Kurdoğlu, meanwhile, deepens her research with materials taken from nature—natural pigments such as black tea, butterfly pea flower tea, and chalk stone. Her work titled “fısıldayarak;” (“by whispering”) addresses the uncanny and enchanting theme of “remembering someone else’s memories.” Presented in a highly fragmented structure, characters and temporalities blur into one another in this piece; as it becomes unclear who remembers what, memories transform into a shared whisper that connects the characters.
Slow Stitches and Bodily Contact with Nature
Sanem Odabaşı’s works embroider the traces left by nature and time onto textile surfaces as “thought gardens.” For Odabaşı, the garden is not merely a flowery landscape; it is a space where the marks left in passing by a being are gathered. Her interventions on cotton, linen, and silk using plant-based dyes document a temporary yet intuitive presence that says “I was here.” The topographic lines she creates with slow stitches almost map the uneven terrain of memory.
Finally, Merve Zeybek removes memory from being a question of ownership and transforms it into a bodily experience. Drawing inspiration from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s notion of embodied perception, Zeybek argues that the body touching nature does not merely remember the past—it relives it. In her practice, natural elements such as stone, soil, and water are not simply materials; they become living mediators that bridge past and present. This continuity between body and world completes the exhibition’s overarching theme of “fluid memory.”
Exhibition Information
Artists: Metin Katırcılar, Maya Kurdoğlu, Sanem Odabaşı, Merve Zeybek
Venue: Simbart Projects, Istanbul
Dates: 16 January – 28 February 2026
Themes: Memory, Nature, Leaving Traces, Identity
Opening tomorrow, this exhibition could be a wonderful stop for your weekend plans. You have until the end of February to see how the past seeps into objects and how nature itself remembers.
