The quiet worlds of Claire Arkas

Welcome back to Al-Monitor Istanbul.

Have you, like me, started longing for sunshine? Here is an exhibition that offers a little warmth and a gentle rehearsal for a blue-green summer. This week, our selection lingers on light as a mood: from a painterly pause in Cihangir to a revived Beyoglu address shaped by fire and memory, and from pop nostalgia to an ancient landscape under pressure. Consider this your midwinter invitation to look again and dream ahead.

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Thanks for reading,

Nazlan (@NazlanEr on X)

P.S. Have tips on Istanbul’s culture scene? Send them my way at nertan@al-monitor.com.

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1. Leading the week: A ‘Claire’ view of the world

“Green Reflection.” Oil on canvas. By Claire Arkas. (Photo courtesy of the artist)

There is a certain tyranny to the big statement in contemporary art. Izmir-born and Paris-educated Claire Arkas has never been particularly interested in it. In “The Interval of Light,” her 14th solo exhibition, now on view at Ark Kultur in Cihangir, she turns instead to the minor, the fleeting, the almost missed — not the city at its full volume, but its quieter moments.

That preference for understatement runs through Arkas’ life as much as her work. The daughter of Lucien Arkas, one of Turkey’s most prominent art patrons and a larger-than-life businessman, she has long chosen to live and work away from the spotlight, often exhibiting beyond the family’s Izmir base. I first encountered her paintings not in an Arkas gallery, but in a sunlit space in Istanbul. From the Aegean to southern Europe, Arkas has gravitated toward places where light is not decorative but structural — a condition of seeing.

She held her first solo exhibition in the early 2000s, developing a painterly language anchored in color, pattern and surface. Her work recalls the dense, intimate visual fields of Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard, post-Impressionist painters who treated interiors and fragments of daily life as serious sites of perception rather than grand narratives.

Curator and art writer Karoly Aliotti, who wrote the text for the exhibition, describes Arkas’ approach as marked by restraint rather than withdrawal. “There is something reminiscent of a Sufi intuition in this modesty and silence,” he noted. “When the painter withdraws, the world gains space to appear.”

The exhibition brings together 37 works that move fluidly between nature and the city. A chandelier fractures into reflections; a narrow street pauses; plants behind a florist’s window push gently against the city’s gray. Olive trees appear as bodies scored by time.

“Two Sides of the Glass” (Photo courtesy of the artist)

“The Interval of Light” slows time and sharpens attention, inviting viewers into their own store of half-remembered homes, gardens and childhood scenes. As critic Evrim Altug observes, Arkas works with respect for the viewer’s solitary encounter with the image.

The exhibition also offers a welcome opportunity to revisit Ark Kultur, the magnificent house where Egyptian artist Mahmoud Khaled presented his impressive work, “Proposal for a House Museum of an Unknown Crying Man,” nearly a decade ago.

📍Where: Batarya Sokak. No:2 Cihangir 

🗓️ When: Feb. 6

2. Word on the street: Return of Otar

Mustafa Otar: man at work (Mustafa Otar Official Instagram)

Istanbul’s dining scene loves a comeback, especially one rooted in memory. Housed in the late-19th-century Passage de Petit Champs, NuPera — a defining address of Beyoglu’s 2000s food and nightlife scene — returns as Kontuar Pera. The revival is led by open-fire chef Mustafa Otar, whose seasonal, flame-driven menu sets the tone: bottarga with lemon butter and brioche; citrus-laced young carrots; almond-milk ceviche; grilled beef trotter with sumac and pickled onion; gurnard skewers with sour chickpeas; and a nostalgic finish of caramelised milk with Antep pistachio.

📍Where: Mesrutiyet Cd. 67/A Beyoglu

3. Istanbul diary

Tarkan back in Volkswagen Arena (Photo courtesy of Volkswagen Arena)

Tarkan, Turkey’s rare pop figure capable of turning nostalgia into collective euphoria, is back on an indoor Istanbul stage for the first time since 2019. After a sold-out opening run, the concert series continues at Volkswagen Arena on Jan. 27, 30 and 31, carrying 35 years of hits, a renewed repertoire and the kind of crowd energy that makes time briefly irrelevant. Try your luck on the much-coveted tickets on Biletix or the venue.

At Istanbul Modern, “Semiha Berksoy: Aria of All Colors” brings together more than 200 works tracing Berksoy’s singular universe across opera, painting, theater, film and writing. Expanded after its debut at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, the exhibition reframes Berksoy not only as a pioneering opera singer but as a cross-disciplinary artist who treated performance as a way of living. On view until May 11.

At Labirent Sanat, “ Photograph of a Dream” brings together works by Gülfem Kessler and Nadide Akdeniz, centering on the dream state as a space of continuous transformation rather than fixed meaning. Moving between intuition and control, chaos and structure, the exhibition treats the image as something always in the making. On view until Feb. 7.