While visiting the home of the late textile artist Nasra Simmeshindi, acclaimed Turkish artist Kutlug Ataman noticed a strip of her ceiling painted azure blue. Simmeshindi told Ataman that the silsel, or “fluttering of wings” in the Aramaic dialect of southeast Turkey, served as a substitute sky when she could not wander outside. The motif became the basis for Ataman’s 2012 tapestry “Silsel.”

Now Simmeshindi’s own work is on display in “I-You-They: A Century of Artist Women” at Istanbul’s Mesher gallery through May 29, an expansive exhibition that seeks to amend the record on who paved the way for Turkish contemporary artists. Curated by Deniz Artun, the show features 117 artists who lived and worked in Turkey between 1850 and 1950, many of them ignored by art historians until now. 

“Art history in Turkey has largely skipped past and failed to record many women … leaving them in the shadows,” said Artun. “We cannot correct art history with one exhibition. Our objective instead is to open the door slightly, to leave it ajar so that others can push through.”

Underrepresentation of female artists in museums, galleries and textbooks is hardly Turkey’s problem alone. The nub of “I-You-They” is the seminal essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” from 1971, in which the art historian Linda Nochlin skewered the very notion of “Great Art” in a world that long barred half of the population from art schools, salons and apprenticeships.