Initiated for the first time in 2017, British Council Turkey’s Arts team has offered a curated show out of the British Council Collection, a museum without walls in a virtual space which can be accessed by anyone having an internet connection. The fourth version of the platform was launched in February 2020.
The first edition of the project was called ‘I Dreamed A Dream The Other Night’ and it hosted curator Elif Kamışlı, Exhibition Coordinator of the Istanbul Biennial with her selection based on two strong traditions in British art landscape and sculpture. The site was visited by 110.000 people and was awarded with four Golden Spider Web Awards in Istanbul including the Website of the Year.
The second edition, entitled ‘You Look Familiar’ hosted an emerging curator from Turkey, Ulya Soley, Collection Manager at the Pera Museum who based her selection on the theme of portraiture as a tool for inclusiveness, emphasising its changing perception on the last 80 years. This edition was visited 159.000 times in three months and ranked the first in Events / Culture and Arts Category and awarded the Best Microsite at the 16th Golden Spider Web Awards. It also received three Merit Awards in the Microsite, User Experience and User Interface categories at the Felis Awards.
The third edition, Mine Kaplangı has been selected to curate the third exhibition with her ‘Dancing With Witches‘ concept. The exhibition takes inspiration from a current focus on the witch/woman as a symbol of power and works of English literature which foreground women’s rights and equality. The viewers are invited to a journey, through a selection of art works from the British Council Collection, that underpins the role of female artists whose presence and influence within the history Western art has been concealed or swept aside, with the addition of works by contemporary artists from Turkey.
This year, aiming to bring a new exhibition experience by moving arts to the digital environment, we have launched ‘Almost There’ , the fourth edition of the digital arts platform ‘Museum without Walls’. For the first time this year, the exhibition curators were selected outside of Turkey as well, and this year’s curators are Teona Burkiashvili from Georgia, Tatiana Kochubinska from Ukraine and Seyhan Musaoğlu from Turkey.
‘Almost There’ features selected artworks from Georgia, Turkey and Ukraine alongside the works of artists in the British Council Collection to create an extensive assembly of art in its various forms, including photography, video, recorded performance art, painting and installations.
