Culture Route Festival unites powerful exhibitions with İzmir audiences
IZMIR
The İzmir Culture and Art Factory has opened its doors to two powerful exhibitions exploring introspection and identity as part of the İzmir Cultural Route Festival.
At the İzmir Painting and Sculpture Museum’s Temporary Exhibition Hall, painter and illustrator Reha Barış presented his first project, “Hatırla! Kimsin?” (‘Remember! Who Are You?’). The exhibition features 19 figurative and surrealist works exploring the deformation of the human condition and the tension between beauty and corruption.
The show’s artistic director, Nurgül Şenefe, said the exhibition was designed as a symbolic journey into the subconscious. “Visitors are welcomed by a specially designed entrance area created by artist Ayhan Doğan,” she explained. “We conceived it as a dark passage into the depths of the mind — referencing the folds of the brain and inviting people to face their inner selves.”
Şenefe emphasized that the exhibition aims to confront visitors with humanity’s aesthetic essence as well as its capacity for distortion. “Human beings are, by nature, aesthetic creatures,” she said. “Yet how can we possess such potential for ugliness? Here, we try to express this paradox through metaphor and art.”
Lighting and sound choices play an important role in amplifying the experience. A mirror installed within the exhibition encourages visitors to engage in self-reflection. “People stand before the mirror and courageously speak to themselves, sharing their thoughts and emotions. With their consent, we record and share these moments. It is our way of saying: Remember, who are you, human?”
Palestinian voices amplified
Meanwhile, at the Archaeology and Ethnography Museum of the same complex, another exhibition titled “Hala Yaşıyorum” (‘I Am Still Alive’) brings together the works of 15 Palestinian artists, including Alaa Albaba, Khaled Hourani, Bahir Makhoul, Nabil Anani and Sliman Mansour.
Centered on themes of resistance, memory and identity, the exhibition reflects the Palestinian experience through painting, mixed media and installation. The works speak to both personal and collective histories, chronicling loss, endurance and the ongoing pursuit of hope.
Both exhibitions can be visited daily between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. until Nov. 2.
