pilot Tarlabaşı Community Workshop and Exhibition

Tarlabaşı Contemporary is an exhibition PASAJ. Tarlabaşı Contemporary is a fruit of the collaboration between Local A., PASAJ and the kids of Tarlabaşı Community Center. Other outcomes are the workshops with children from the neighborhood and networking activities with cultural organizations. Tarlabaşı Community Workshop and Exhibition pilot has been made with support from the Swedish Institute.

The exhibition centers on the concepts of STAGE and SHELTER and consists of works, which are based on practical research
in the Tarlabaşı neighborhood of Istanbul. The research and devising process, which Local A. calls Workshop as Research, involves art workshops with children, colloquiums with local cultural actors and collaboration with organizations from Tarlabaşı. The results and documentation from the workshop and the new understanding of the neighborhood with its social challenges is the material, which the Local A. artists use, and turn into acontemporary art exhibition with new art works.

Two important aspects were the watchwords during the workshops with the children in Tarlabaşı: the concepts of STAGE and SHELTER in relation to human scale. SHELTER represents the necessity for a safe position, a physical space to live and grow in. STAGE denotes the need for platforms to develop personal interests, treats and abilities and also a possibility to make one's voice heard.

Local A. wants to shed light on Tarlabaşı because it is a challenged area. Many different groups of refugees are passing thru Tarlabaşı. Now high criminality and drug use rates are used as a pretext for evicting part of the population and razing remains of beautiful buildings and by that destroying the community tissue. The possibility to show the exhibition in an artist run environment in Tarlabaşı as parallel event to the Istanbul biennial framework further widens the diffusion of the project and visibility of Tarlabaşı in the cultural context.

Tarlabaşı Community Center is working to support people who live in the Tarlabaşı area who are excluded from social life and live in poverty and deprivation of fundamental rights, wiping out the prejudice to wards Tarlabaşı and raising awareness among Tarlabaşı inhabitants in terms of violation of their rights. www.tarlabasi.com

PASAJ hosts socially engaged and participatory art projects by local and international artists. It focuses on the value of the experience. It transforms itself with the support and the creativity of artists and participators. htsajist.wordpress.com

From the exhibition:

From the workshops:

The pilot is carried out with support from the Swedish Institute Creative Force.