Neş’e Erdok’s New Exhibition Opened at the Istanbul Painting and Sculpture Museum

The new solo exhibition consisting of recent works by 86-year-old artist Neş’e Erdok has opened to visitors at the Istanbul Painting and Sculpture Museum. Developing a unique figurative language over a half-century artistic career, the artist is organizing a solo exhibition for the first time in the institution where she grew up and worked as an educator for many years.

Neş’e Erdok’s paintings handle ordinary people with their stories, silences, and inner worlds. Encountered within everyday life, the portraits take the viewer into the depths of the human soul with the artist’s distinct colors and striking narrative. Beginning with portraits and mother-child figures, the exhibition takes on a quality that confronts the problems in the painful geographies of the modern world.

The artist’s works such as “At the Border”, “In Front of the Tent”, “Soup”, “Which Migration”, “On the Ruins”, “Little Breads”, and “The Wounded” reflect migration and the struggle for survival in Gaza and in camps. Animal figures such as cats and birds appear as symbolic imagery against the tragedy in the works. Having studied at the Neşet Günal Atelier in the Painting Department of the Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts and retiring from Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University in 2008 as the institution's first female atelier-owning faculty member, Erdok holds a personal significance by opening a solo exhibition in this museum for the first time.