About the Exhibition
Çiler Belen’s solo painting exhibition explores our relationship with nature, changing ways of life and humanity’s impact on the environment through the seaside shelters known as çardaks.
27 October–27 November 2026
Orkun Ozan (Himmet ÖCAL) Sanat Galerisi · Orkun Ozan hall
Milli Egemenlik Cad., 40. Sokak No:36, Muratpaşa / Antalya
Opening reception: Tuesday, 27 October 2026, at 17:30.
Visiting hours: Every day, 10:00–20:00.
Curatorial Text
When I began working to document çardaks in the 1990s, concepts such as the climate crisis, the Anthropocene, microplastics and marine mucilage had not yet entered our lives.
If we were to say today, “Let’s return to nature”, we would find neither nature, people nor çardaks where we left them, or in the same natural state.
The sole responsibility lies with HUMANKIND, which treats nature carelessly and uses reason and science both to create and to destroy. Since 2020, the weight of human-made objects — concrete, bricks, plastic and so on — has exceeded the combined weight of all living things on Earth. With advancing technology, people have ceased to be beings capable of giving up the comfort zones they have built for themselves and living with what nature provides.
Had the ÇARDAKS, which had endured for centuries as part of a northern Mediterranean way of life, not been demolished in 2002 in the name of tourism and instead survived to this day… People today, too, could have experienced the pleasures of a natural life, close to nature: taking a shower through a hose extending from a barrel, washing their hands and faces with water drawn from a pump, drawing the curtains on the veranda and falling asleep to the sound of the waves, washing the sand from their feet in a bucket of water… Or… they might simply have looked and walked on, saying, “How primitive.”
Çiler Belen
