This Friday, a door opens in Beyoğlu’s Mısır Apartmanı. Zilberman Gallery’s annual open-call programme “Unfold”‘s 2026 edition opens in Istanbul this Friday under the title *Sites of Relation*. And this year there is something particular: Berlin opened with the same exhibition last Wednesday. Two cities, one theme, a single international jury.
Zilberman’s Berlin-Istanbul Bridge
Zilberman Gallery was founded in Istanbul in 2008; it has spaces in Istanbul, Berlin, and Miami. From its founding, the effort to build a systematic bridge between the Istanbul and Berlin art scenes has been built into the gallery programme. The “Unfold” programme is the most concrete annual expression of that effort: artists selected by open call bring their work into the gallery scene each year.
In 2026, the programme takes a historic step: the Berlin and Istanbul editions open simultaneously for the first time, carrying the same theme, selected by a single international jury. Jury members came from Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, Istanbul, and New York: Ceren Erdem, Britta Färber, Anna-Catharina Gebbers, Enis Karavil, İz Öztat, and Aybüke Sanuç.
“Sites of Relation”: The Conceptual Framework
Every artistic practice stands in a position: in a place, a history, a web of dependencies. The space in which one works, the economies one navigates, the political realities one responds to, and the past one inherits, remembers, or contests — these do not remain external to a work; they enter its material, form, and meaning.
Works in the Istanbul edition turn their attention particularly toward places: how are places used as living spaces, how do they get lost, and how does history live on within them? A machine that presents the bureaucracy of urban development as something acting on bodies; questions about language, wind, and belonging; an encounter in the artist’s own village — relationships to places persist, even when the buildings in them disappear. History here is not an immutable essence but something continuously shifting through materials, images, and spaces.
On the other side, works approaching interrelationship through touch and impression: wool, clay, paper, and organic processes absorbing history and bodies. A hand-made book of frottages from a palace ruined and rebuilt many times; an embossed relief; the clay-body-earth relation; childhood memories gathered in wool. The body returns too, marked by societal conditions.
The Question of “Place” in Istanbul’s Context
This conceptual framework carries particular meaning for Istanbul. On the Taksim-Beyoğlu axis, in a geography where history is densely layered and transformation is constantly felt, the matter of “relation to place” carries a simultaneously political, aesthetic, and personal weight. The works in the exhibition do not necessarily address this weight directly — but context always enters the text.
The gallery is in the Mısır Apartmanı, at the heart of İstiklal Caddesi. This location itself is a “site of relation”: a point where many layers, histories, and transformations converge.
FAQ: Zilberman Unfold’26 Istanbul
- Where and until when can I see the exhibition?
*Zilberman Unfold’26: Sites of Relation* runs 25 July – 22 August 2026 at Zilberman Gallery Istanbul, İstiklal Cad. No.163 Mısır Apartmanı K.3 D.10 Beyoğlu. Opening: Friday 25 July. Tel: +90 212 251 12 14. Contact the gallery for admission and opening hours.
- What is Unfold?
Zilberman Gallery’s annual open-call programme, running since 2010, which selects and brings attention to emerging artistic practices through an international jury. The 2026 edition opens simultaneously in Berlin and Istanbul for the first time.
- Can I also see this show in Berlin?
Yes. The Berlin edition runs 23 July – 22 August 2026 at Zilberman Gallery Berlin, Goethestr. 82. Different artists, same theme.
NO-26 Note
When *Sites of Relation* opens in both Berlin and Istanbul, the bridge between the two cities becomes not a conceptual but a physical reality. In this week’s Istanbul agenda — alongside Hayalet Kuartet and HESPERIDES — this Friday brings one more reason to make the trip to Beyoğlu.
