Basınç Altında Suyun Üstünde: Arter’de Zamanın ve Direncin Dansı

When you start walking through Arter’s halls, you first feel the weight of silence. Then you realize: this silence is one of anticipation, tension, and endurance. Under Pressure, Above Water makes you experience exactly what its title suggests, both physically and emotionally: the effort to stay afloat under pressure, the will to survive, and resilience…

The exhibition unfolds almost like a rhythm. As your eyes move from one work to another, your sense of time and space shifts; each piece breathes on its own, creating its own cadence. Michaël Borremans’ canvases or Alicja Kwade’s spatial installations bring together both physical and mental pressure. Curated by Nilüfer Şaşmazer, this experience brings 15 artists from different disciplines under one roof, teaching the audience both how to be shaken and how to remain standing.

_{Claire Fontaine İsimsiz}

_{Nadia Kaabi-Linke, Kusursuz Suçlu}

Another dimension of the exhibition is its emphasis on collective and social memory. From Shilpa Gupta to Mariana Vassileva, the artists address not only individual but also collective stories of pressure and resistance. Each work feels like a drop that manages to stay on the surface of water; small yet powerful, fragile yet resilient. Blending with Arter’s architecture, the exhibition teaches the viewer not only to look, but also to feel. As you move from one room to the next, you realize how difficult, yet how precious, it is to stay afloat. Each piece, like a gently striking wave, both surprises you and reminds you of your own breath, your own resilience.

Under Pressure, Above Water acts as a kind of meditation against today’s chaotic tempo and the pressures of both individual and collective life. Perhaps staying afloat is difficult, perhaps the pressure is heavy, but aesthetic resistance, beauty, and awareness are always possible.

This exhibition is created not only to be seen, but to be experienced. As you leave Arter’s halls, you rediscover the tremor of a drop on the surface, the rhythm of your own breath, and the bonds you form with your surroundings. To manage to stay on the water’s surface is perhaps life’s most aesthetic form of resistance… You are invited to experience water’s different effect at Arter until January 11, 2026.