Hara

Located on the outskirts of Istanbul, in the forest-surrounded atmosphere of Uskumruköy, Hara hosts a boundary-pushing exhibition between March 1 and July 26. The Promises of Monsters, curated by Ezgi Hamzaçebi, examines the representations of human and non-human bodies, states, and modes of existence that have historically been labeled as “monstrous.” The exhibition brings together ten artists from different disciplines: Canavar, Hilal Polat, İrem Aydın, Lara Ögel, Ömer Tevfik Erten, Seçil Epik, Serkan Aka, Şafak Şule Kemancı, Yaşam Şaşmazer and Zeynep Kılınç. Spanning sculpture, installation, photography and video—many of them produced specifically for this exhibition—the works approach bodies and identities not as fixed categories but as states of suspension and threshold. A space where boundaries blur In the exhibition, the boundaries between human and non-human, living and non-living, natural and artificial, functional and waste, visible and suppressed are constantly shifting. Fragmented bodies, ghostlike plants, monstrous images, de-functionalized forms and ritual remnants draw attention to processes of “becoming embodied,” while inviting viewers to move beyond the impulse to categorize. Here, flaw, mutation, hybridity and darkness are not deviations but traces of potential, resistance and alternative ways of existing. The figure of the monster appears not as a threatening other, but as a threshold figure that resists classification and hints at futures not yet fully...