Yoko Ono comes to Istanbul

Welcome back to AL-MONITOR Istanbul.

This week is dedicated to the young and the young at heart. We start with the ever-iconoclastic Yoko Ono, 93, still asking visitors to crawl through doors and lose themselves in mazes, and end with a UNFPA report on what young people actually want from life and what stands in their way. In between: a chef summoned from his own restaurant to feed NATO leaders, a late discovery of a Turkish novelist, and a temple that spent 113 years under the wrong name.

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Thanks for reading,

Nazlan (@NazlanEr on X)

P.S. Have tips on Istanbul’s culture scene? Send them my way at nertan@al-monitor.com.

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1. Leading the week: Doors and unpredictability

“Arising,” from “Yoko Ono: Insound and Instructure” at Sakip Sabanci Museum. (Courtesy of SSM)

Sakip Sabanci Museum has never hosted anything quite like “Yoko Ono: Insound and Instructure,” and neither, frankly, has Turkey. At 93, Ono remains stubbornly resistant to being filed away as “the woman who broke up the Beatles,” a myth museum director Ahu Antmen is visibly tired of correcting. The show, organized with MUSAC in Leon, Spain, and curated with Ono’s own studio, gathers 67 works across seven decades, spilling out of the galleries and into the garden of the Bosphorus-facing Atli Kosk.

The premise is simple and slightly terrifying: Visitors crawl through a set of “En-trance” doors — one low and rising, one that narrows until you’re on your knees. There’s a chess set that’s entirely white, no black pieces anywhere, playable only “as long as you remember where all your pieces are,” per Ono’s own wall text — a fairly on-brand metaphor for adulthood. Elsewhere, “My Mother Is Beautiful” invites visitors to write down whatever comes to mind about their mothers and pin it to the wall, an exercise that many of us end up crying through.

The exhibition draws heavily on “Grapefruit,” Ono’s 1964 book of instruction pieces, poetry that asks the reader to complete the work in their own head, decades before “participatory art” became a grant-application phrase. Outside, past the museum’s front lawn, a staircase climbs toward the sky; reaching it means stepping off the path and onto the grass, a small, sanctioned act of rule-breaking that feels bigger than it should.

“Doors” (Courtesy of SSM)

It’s an exhibition that trusts you to bring your own doorway-shaped baggage and rewards you for it. Go on a Tuesday when entry’s free.

Date: Until Dec. 27

Location: Sakip Sabanci Cad. No:42, Emirgan, Sariyer

2. Word on the street: Turk by Fatih Tutak

The Turk who nourished NATO: Fatih Tutak (Courtesy of Fatih Tutak- TURK)

We reviewed Turk before, but the temptation to redo it was too great once its chef was summoned to the capital last week. On July 7, the Michelin two-starred Fatih Tutak swapped his 30-seat Sisli dining room, Turk, for the Presidential Complex, cooking the NATO Summit gala for Erdogan, Trump, Macron, Merz, Starmer and Meloni — pide with Trabzon butter, sea bass with tarama, milk baklava with pistachio foam. Back home, his 12-course micro-seasonal menu (30 covers, no substitutions, no exceptions for onions or dairy) makes the same argument at a gentler volume: Turkish cuisine needs no translating, only recontextualizing.

Location: Cumhuriyet Hacıahmet Mah. Silahsor Cad., Yeniyol Sk. No: 2, Sisli, Istanbul

3. Istanbul diary

“The Shape Between,” Muse Contemporary. (Courtesy of the gallery)

At Muse Contemporary in Levent, Ruzgar Polat’s “The Shape Between” explores presence and absence through bodies that hover between visibility and erasure; hollow figures, masks that cover not just faces but consciousness (and some great abs). Until Aug. 15.

Satirist, novelist and Turkey’s best-loved literary troublemaker, Aziz Nesin is remembered on the anniversary of his death with “Azizname,” a cartoon exhibition organized by the Turkish Writers’ Union and Egitim Sen, at Egitim Sen’s Kadikoy branch.

Sound of Europe Festival brings young musicians from across the continent to Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir simultaneously between July 17 and July 19, with acts including Aze, Witch ’n’ Monk and Stefan Galea, alongside Turkey’s Enes Kunduraci and the Izmir Metropolitan Pop Orchestra, at Kadikoy Alan, Ankara’s Kugulu Park and Izmir’s Bostanli Seyir Terasi.

Pink Martini, the Portland ensemble that calls itself “a little orchestra” and has sung in 25 languages including Turkish, plays Harbiye Cemil Topuzlu Open-Air Theater on July 22. Tickets here.