The exhibition “Leaps of Faith, Heaps of Fate,” co-curated by faculty member M. Melis Bilgin Koen, PhD, is featured in the 18th Istanbul Biennial Parallel Events

The group exhibition titled “İnanç Sıçrayışları, Yazgı Yığınları / Leaps of Faith, Heaps of Fate,” curated by BİLGİ Department of Arts and Cultural Management faculty member Mesrure Melis Bilgin Koen, PhD, Yeditepe University Department of Visual Communication Design faculty member Merve Çaşkurlu, PhD, and scholar Orhan Kemal Koçak, is on view at Eskiyeni Sahaf as part of the 18th Istanbul Biennial Parallel Events until 23 November 2025.

The exhibition opened with the participatory performance “Strange Games at Eskiyeni” by artist Ece Ulutan, and features works by independent artists Pınar Akkurt, Mustafa Avcı, Aydın Berk Bilgin, Merve Çaşkurlu, Başak Kaptan, Mesrure Melis Bilgin Koen, Ece Ulutan, and Zeynep Günsür Yüceil. Bringing together printmaking, experimental photography, ready-made interventions, sound installations, edible artworks, and performances, the exhibition draws on the layered, discoverable environment of a second-hand bookstore—an alternative to the sanitized neutrality of gallery spaces—rich with objects and lived histories.

In their works, the artists re-imagine and transform the objects found in Eskiyeni Sahaf as characters, creating space for their disconnected, intertwined, indifferent, delicate, fragile, and interrupted coexistences. During encounters with these works—each refusing to exist independently of their surrounding objects—books and items turn into characters, the bookstore becomes a stage, and visitors become participants.