Maurizio Cirillo
Istanbul never ends, or so it seems. Buildings upon buildings upon buildings.
When I wandered through the suburbs and the periphery I felt again and again as if I was at a kind of theatre, watching the stage, but not being able to act. I roamed entire quarters made up of gated communities. Nice lawns cut neatly. I frequently had the feeling to be in a theme park, with a marvellous, even gleaming façade. But where are the ruptures? Where do these appearances crumble? This magnificently staged extraordinariness in many Istanbul shopping malls where I frequently spent hours. How can you grasp all that? Not at all. And what is there to be understood anyway?
I liked best to move around on foot, especially at the periphery where sidewalks are virtually non-existent or apparently do not really make sense. I walked and walked and all of a sudden I ended up on a motorway.
It is precisely this moment that appealed to me and that I was looking for again and again. Then, I took a dolmuş to go back to the city centre – suddenly, everything looked different. Those contrasts were what fascinated me day in and day out.
| 1. | My stay in one word: |
| Great | |
| 2. | Things I miss since I am no longer there: |
| The really stunning city with its people, the chaos and the sea, the çay and the food. | |
| 3. | Dos & Don'ts at this place?: |
| do's: Going out and exploring the city don'ts: Following the same paths over and over again |
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| 4. | Where you can buy great supplies: |
| One of the most fascinating things of Istanbul are the big malls, for example Perpa is well worth visiting. You just have to know to which quarter to go in order to find certain materials. For everything related to photography, for example, you go over to Eminönü and you will find it around the Sirkeci tram stop, textiles are offered for sale in the area around the Vefa bus stop in Fatih. Tools, building materials, screws as well as pigments are available in Karaköy down from the Galata Tower. | |
| 5. | What you should definitely bring with you from home: |
| Openness and the will to explore, a few scraps of Turkish | |
| 6. | On art at my residency place: |
| There are numerous different institutions in the city. The REM Art Space, Versus Art Project, SALT, Studio X-Istanbul and the Depo stood out particularly. | |
| 7. | Around the studio – this is where I go shopping, drink a coffee and get the best lunch specials within walking distance: |
| There is a small supermarket (OR-KA) more or less around the corner, there are greengroceries up the street (A?a Hamam?), and there is a small organic grocery (Balya) to the right of the studio down the hill. Most of the time, I am on the go and do not spend so much time in the neighbourhood of the studio. But if you want to eat something before a tour, the best lunch is served at Özkonak Lokantas? or Cihangir Lokantas?; you will find both walking towards Taksim close to Firuza?a Cami. | |
| 8. | Where I like to spend the evening (dinner, drinks and best sound): |
| The city is too big and the time is unfortunately too short to always go to the same places; however, nearby Tanya Bar and Urban are very nice. | |
| 9. | What I would have liked to know about the studio already at the start of my residency: |
| That Istanbul can be very cold in winter. |
Website resident: mauriziocirillo.com