Frieze

Hera Büyüktaşçıyan | Arter, Istanbul | 27 November – 30 August 

Spectres haunt ‘Phantom Quartet’, Hera Büyüktaşçıyan’s first institutional show in Turkey. Born in Istanbul to a Greek mother and an Armenian father, the artist came of age in a city shaped by erasure. From the late 19th century onwards, ravages inflicted by anti-Greek and anti-Armenian pogroms defined the multiethnic city. On 24 April 1915, Armenian intellectuals and dissidents, primarily based in the Tatavla neighbourhood, were taken from their homes in raids orchestrated by the nationalist Young Turks movement, marking the start of the Armenian genocide (1915–16). Forty years later, the 1955 Istanbul pogrom violently displaced the city’s Greek communities. The state’s appropriation of Christian-owned wealth and property lingers as an uneasy after-image. These histories cast long shadows over Büyüktaşçıyan’s new works, which explore fragility, memory and the pain of leaving the safety of one’s home. – Kaya Genç