Rooted in the French absurde and Latin absurdus, dictionary definitions often dismiss the concept as the merely “nonsensical” or “out of place.” Yet we remain acutely familiar with the existential tension Albert Camus etched into collective memory through Sisyphus: humanity’s unrelenting, stubborn search for meaning against the steadfast indifference of the world. Navigating an erratic era where rational frameworks crack and the line between truth and falsehood blurs, our reflexive response to the inexplicable is often a casual shrug: “How absurd!”
Running from 29 September to 27 October 2026, Baysan Yüksel and Merve Erbilgiç’s exhibition The Joy of Unlikely Things refuses to treat the absurd as a comedic respite or a surreal escape. Instead, it approaches the absurd as a nuanced method—a radical mode of intervention that brings reality’s inherent self-contradictions into plain sight.
As the curatorial framework and the essay by Bahar Güneş emphasize, making sense of the world does not always come from trying to further rationalize it, but from pushing its inherent absurdity a step further. The facade of authority and the established order slips away the moment we stop pretending it is logical. The Joy of Unlikely Things eschews any didactic impulse to define or categorize the absurd. Instead, it opens an unscripted sphere of freedom that oscillates between humor and a subtle sense of disquiet.
Within this space, Merve Erbilgiç harnesses the narrative potency of illustration without locking the viewer into a linear storyline. The images coalescing on canvas and paper serve not as illustrative explanations, but as fragile visual fragments suspended at the intersection of memory, emotion, intuition, and chance. In works informed by the poetry of Orhan Veli, familiar everyday moments are filtered through personal memory and reconfigured. The elegance of the poetic meets the subversion of the absurd within the same visual cadence: meaning begins to coalesce only to break apart, unfinished, leaving the viewer spellbound by the magic of ambiguity.
On the other hand, Baysan Yüksel births a resilient, fabulistic realm from the very heart of this uncertainty. In compositions that interrogate routine, consumerism, and rigid traditions or beliefs, a procession of dreams, universal symbols, animals, and fantastical figures takes center stage: a red horse meticulously combing its mane regardless of circumstances, a pristine white tulip, the Child King, and non-existent flora. In Yüksel’s universe, childlike hope and rebellion share the stage with acceptance and interrogation. Rather than taking refuge in fiction to escape the gravity of our time, the artist uses these staged fictions to construct a new reality and a locus of resilience.
Approaching our present moment through distinct lenses, both artists ultimately meet on an irrational yet fiercely vibrant terrain. Where Erbilgiç fractures and obfuscates the absurd, Yüksel extracts joy and hope from that obscurity. Echoing Sisyphus’s rebellious acceptance as he rolls his boulder uphill, choosing joy in a world where meaning constantly slips away is no naive retreat, but a stubborn insistence on generating life’s own answers. As the familiar quietly shifts off-center and the mundane expands through fresh associations, The Joy of Unlikely Things confirms that unhinged times demand unhinged art, reminding us once more that joy is not a destructive force, but a generative one.
