Carving memory from stone

Welcome to Al-Monitor Istanbul.

 As we prepare for the end of the year, this issue explores memory, shattered buildings and disrupted lives — from an exhibition on stone’s recollections to the latest earthquake statistics. Then we visit a bustling cafe in Moda and revisit Istanbul’s most painful memories on screen. The city never sits still; neither do its stories.

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Thanks for reading,

Nazlan (@NazlanEr on X)

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1. Leading the week: The Memory of Stone

Tansu Kirci’s marble works of imagines structures (Courtesy of the artist) 

In one of the centuries-old stone houses of the Fener Evleri complex — recently revitalized by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality — sculptor Tansu Kirci lays out a field of delicate architectural forms. “The Memory of Stone” brings together 18 works carved from amorphous or discarded marble blocks he selects in quarries across the Aegean: imagined structures that recall ancient Greek and Roman temples, staircases or tombs. 

Perched on white pedestals, these miniature constructions draw the viewer in through their uncanny resemblance to familiar architectural heritage. With their veins, fractures and worn surfaces, the marbles carry their own histories, making them far from neutral material for Kirci: They are witnesses, vessels of memory. “I mostly use amorphous and discarded marble. I don’t work on a clean, cut block,” he told Al-Monitor as we toured the exhibition. “I go to the quarries and choose every one of those discarded stones myself.” 

Unexpected pairings animate the works — an Ionian capital placed under the Anatolian “elibelinde” motif, symbolizing fertility and continuity. “Ancient Greek or Anatolia … I don’t differentiate between them. They are intertwined in the memory of this geography. I bring Turkish-Anatolian motifs together with ancient Greek elements because it’s important to see cultures in continuity, without turning any of them into ‘the other,’” Kirci explained.

The seven-month production period, shaped by Kirci’s bond with the venue, includes two pieces designed specifically for the building’s stone niches. In “Antakya,” unpolished stones fill a portrait-like frame, their rough textures pointing both to the city’s layered history and the devastation it has endured time and again. “The Staircase,” made of three white sheets knotted and pressed under glass, evokes the improvised escape ladder used during the 2025 Kartalkaya hotel fire. 

These works mark the point where Kirci’s outer architecture meets his inner one. Born in Izmit in 1992, he was seven during the 1999 Marmara earthquake — too young to grasp the scale of the catastrophe, old enough for its sensations to lodge permanently. A vibrating railing, a splitting wall, the deep sound of shifting stone still return in his dreams. Perhaps because he grew up with that tremor, the erasure of Antakya or the knotted sheets of Kartalkaya feel to him not like distant disasters but like extensions of the same fault line.

Untitled by Tansu Kirci (Courtesy of the artist)

Kirci’s studies at Mugla Sitki Kocman University’s Bodrum Faculty of Fine Arts and later at Marmara University’s Institute of Fine Arts sharpened the architectural vocabulary that now defines his practice: thresholds, corridors, ladders and passages — forms that suggest transformation rather than arrival. 

Earthquake memories, archaeological wanderings, classical references and the layered memory of Anatolia converge in “The Memory of Stone.” At Halic Sanat 1, Kirci presents not only fragile architectural forms but also the stubborn desire to reconstruct what has been lost.

📍Where: Yavuz Sultan Selim, Abdulezelpasa Cd. No: 4, 34083 Fatih

🗓️ When: until Feb. 15, 2026

2. Word on the street: Aralik

Warm inside at Aralik — meaning both “December” and “gap” in Turkish (Courtesy of Aralik)

Moda’s bohemian pulse feels perfectly at home in Aralik, an architectural gem where breakfast plates, handmade pastas and bright cocktails flow from an open kitchen. The shrimp tacos are a minor neighborhood legend, the pizzetta and crisp rocket an ideal late afternoon pairing, and the bar’s Chamliya wines and gin sours make lingering dangerously easy.

Some Fridays turn into a “one-day meyhane,” drawing an even bigger crowd, which means seats, especially by the door, are precious. If it’s too crowded, slip next door to “Aida – vino e cucina,” a delightful Bib Gourmand Italian.

📍Where: Aralik: Caferaga Mahallesi. Ressam Seref Akdik Sok. No:6/A, Kadikoy

📍Where: Aida: Caferağa Mahallesi, Ressam Seref Akdik Sokak No:10, Kadikoy

3. Istanbul diary

The final stop is ’70 — devoted to İpek Duben — and features her sketches from the 1970s onward, including one of her husband, Prof. Alan Duben. (Courtesy of Galerist)

Galerist hosts ’70- Ipek Duben, curated by Farah Aksoy and Amira Arzik, offering a rare look at the artist’s early 1970s drawings, where the foundations of her later spatial language first begin to surface. The show traces how Duben’s New York Studio School years reshaped her thinking and set the stage for the layered surfaces and bodily tensions that came later. Must see until Jan. 3. (Wait for a longer piece on that one!)

Anna Laudel’s “Cabinet 05/25: Expressionism and New Objectivity Then and Now,” curated by Marcus Graf, places early 20th-century giants such as Otto Dix, Hannah Hoch and Max Beckmann in dialogue with contemporary Turkish artists including Erinc Seymen, Erol Eskici and Ali Elmaci. 

Turkish piano legend Fazil Say holds his traditional closing-of-the-year concert on Dec. 27 at Volkswagen Arena with “Mother Earth,” his climate-crisis piano concerto receiving its Turkey premiere under conductor Nil Venditti. The evening continues with the first Turkey performance of “Mozart and Mevlana,” with an ensemble of soloists, chorus and the composer himself at the piano. Seriously, hurry for the tickets.