“It is the media that shapes the way we think,” Yunus Tilen, a recent graduate from the faculty of arts at Batman University, in the southeastern city of Batman, said with strong determination. “It is due to the media that we think of Batman as a dark city of violence and trouble. They are the viziers, the kingmakers.”
He pointed at his painting, oil on a canvas that is shaped like an hourglass. It shows rooftops with nothing on them but old-fashioned antennas and a single figure on top of one of the roofs. The painting is called “City of the Media” — an unmistakable reference to his hometown, Batman, which is often in the news because of the clashes between Kurdistan Workers Party rebels and security forces.The bright rooftops, the clear sky and the simple lines of the painting show a happy place, unlike the photos of the city seen in Turkish newspapers.
Tilen is one of the 108 students whose works have been selected for BASE, a platform for young artists, which held an exhibition in Istanbul’s Galata Greek Primary School on Dec. 21-24. The school, with its high ceilings, spacious rooms, huge French-style windows and dark woodwork, has been closed since 2007 because of the declining population of Greeks in Turkey. In the last few years, however, the building has been used for expositions, including the Istanbul Biennial, a biannual cultural event that drew 440,000 visitors in the fall.
On Dec. 22, the Galata Greek Primary School was crowded with young artists, gallery owners, art collectors and culture journalists. At the entrance hall, TV anchor Emin Capa asked Ali Gureli, the chairman of Istanbul’s largest art fair, Contemporary Istanbul, about the future of the art market in Turkey. The directors of Istanbul’s galleries sat in the front row, along with a chorus of slim, bespectacled and chic women, all patrons of arts. Farther back, young artists listened eagerly and took notes. A small group of artists from Istanbul exchanged names of virtual galleries that accept young artists’ portfolios, just as Gureli explained on stage that virtual galleries are fast increasing in the art market.
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