Eye Magazine

The choice of Istanbul reflected the exhibition’s thematic concerns. As a historic and cultural crossroads between Europe, Minor Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa, the city embodies the interplay of migration, transformation and systemic change. Bringing together diverse artistic voices in this venue emphasised the curatorial vision.

The venue of ‘Critical Shifts’ is an independent art space that was once the atelier of calligrapher Emin Barın (1913-1987), who, from 1943 until his passing, played a pivotal role in adapting the continuous, rhythmic, and proportional pattern systems of Ottoman calligraphy to the modern Turkish alphabet. Alongside his calligraphic practice, Barın played a key role in reviving bookbinding and taught at the Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts. Today, Barın Han continues his legacy.

The 1928 alphabet reform revolutionised Turkish literacy, replacing the Arabic script with a Latin-based alphabet to better suit the phonetics of the Turkish language. Yet, this shift severed ties to traditional Islamic calligraphy, stripping it of its metaphysical dimension and the sacred geometry of its patterns. Decades later, Emin Barın sought to reconcile this rupture, integrating the rhythmic, continuous curves of Islamic Ottoman calligraphy into a modern typographic language. Beyond mere hybridisation, his work navigated the ideological, linguistic, and metaphysical tensions of this transformation—bridging the material and immaterial, not as opposites, but as interwoven forces within a secular Turkey.

The ‘Critical Shifts’ exhibition featured 21 multidisciplinary visual artists, and many works in the exhibition explored the interplay between material and immaterial, visible and invisible forces. Displayed alongside Barın’s calligraphic prints and carved wooden calligraphy, my typographic sculptures and prints further this dialogue – challenging the conventional separation of text and image in writing systems. Expanding on this inquiry, I explore the materiality of writing by reimagining language beyond its flat, linear constraints. Three-dimensional letterforms blur the boundaries between text, image, architecture and sculpture. By transforming abstract thoughts into tangible, sensory experiences, I aimed to reconnect audiences with the materiality of language.

This exploration delves into the layered visual and symbolic meanings of earlier writing systems, reclaiming their historical depth – from hieroglyphs to contemporary innovations – while engaging with the influence of digital technologies. My reinterpretations challenge the reduction of letterforms to linear symbols solely representing sound, expanding their interpretive possibilities through spatial, symbolic, and tactile experiences.

Through these sculptural forms, I explored how the interplay of text, image and material could embody meaning – inviting audiences to engage with language on multiple levels, from the literal to the hieroglyphic and symbolic.

Traditionally, letterpress technology produces reversed material artefacts – tools of reproduction visible only to the printer. Reimagining these forms as right-way-reading 3D objects transforms them into autonomous, tactile glyphs. This approach shows the way that phonetic alphabets reduce writing systems to abstract, linear representations, offering a new paradigm where text, image and materiality intertwine to create immersive visual languages.

Venkov’s film adopts a parallel methodology, using deceleration to transform a volleyball game into painterly movements – kinetic hieroglyphs conveyed through rhythm and pacing. By slowing motion down to 1/40th of real-time, his work invites audiences to reflect on the deeply embedded narratives within bodily gestures, transforming motion into a visual language that challenges conventional ways of reading narrative and meaning.

How meaning is constructed and experienced is central to Dimitri Venkov’s work. Both Venkov’s and my works interrogate inherited systems – whether through slowing cinematic motion or reshaping letterpress typography – urging audiences to rethink how technologies and media shape perception and expression.

By questioning what writing can become, I aim to reconnect language with the body, reintroducing depth, texture, and physicality into the way we create and understand meaning. These creative disruptions propose critical shifts that reshape foundational concepts of perception and expression.

In ‘Critical Shifts’, curators Margarita Osepyan, Maria Korolkova, and Kate Umnova brought together diverse artistic voices; by amplifying interplay between art, science, and technology, it celebrated creativity as a transformative force inspiring us to embrace the complexities of contemporary life as catalysts for curiosity and meaning.

Gülizar Çepoğlu, designer, design lecturer, London and Istanbul.

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