REBUILD is a site-specific show curated by Margarita Kuleva for Contemporary Istanbul.
It draws inspiration from the richness of Istanbul's cultural layers and its remarkable capacity to rebuild itself after multiple crises. It follows the 18th Istanbul Biennale theme of self-preservation and futurities: ‘In the face of precarity and recurring crises, how do material conditions and lack of safety affect our daily lives and shape our relationships with ourselves, our bodies, and our communities?’ (18th Istanbul Biennale statement).
In the current moment of political upheaval and institutional fragility, the urgency of rebuilding extends beyond metaphor into immediate necessity. As democratic institutions strain under pressure and social contracts fracture, we find ourselves confronting the same fundamental question that has driven Istanbul's continuous renewal: how do we reconstruct not just our physical spaces, but our collective capacity for resilience and dialogue? Precisely, the show explores the ability of both human and non-human agents to regenerate and reimagine themselves in several contexts: environmental, architectural, and grassroots movements.
Night Sways, but Underground Listens
Telhan’s work is a meditation on the sediments of Istanbul from a microbial perspective. What lies beneath the city’s surface are not only geological strata but the living archives of its political and ecological histories.
At the center is a sculpture that translates the microbial signature of soil into electrical signals, creating a two-week log of subterranean life. These signals are transformed into a series of time-lapses—accumulated traces and portraits of microbial rhythms.
The work treats the ground as both witness and agent, surfacing unseen pulses at a moment when Istanbul’s underground is subject to ecological gentrification, habitat loss, and exploitation. What emerges is less a static picture than an unfolding negotiation between soil, city, and the futures that can or cannot take root.
Telhan’s works in the exhibition:
1. Langa
Procedural animation, single channel, 11:14, 2025
Based on DNA analysis of soil collected from a single site, the animation visualizes a catalog of bacterial species as an evolving temporal composition.
2. Zincirlikuyu
Procedural animation, single channel, 1:20, 2025
Derived from chemical analysis of soil collected from a cemetery site, the work visualizes the compositional shifts of soil matter as a temporal process.
3. Yenikapı
Procedural animation, single channel, 2:30
Sculpture with soil, custom electronics, and screen-printed electroluminescent panels, 2025
The animation translates electrical activity generated by soil bacteria within the sculpture into dynamic visual patterns, linking microbial metabolism to electronic signal.
