Porcelain, glass and the art of reinvention at RADAR Istanbul

Welcome to Al-Monitor Istanbul.

This week, a rhino with a glass head opens the week at RADAR, and the city’s cultural calendar unfolds with its usual contradictions: silent portraits, reinvented puppets and debates on 17th-century migration. 

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Nazlan

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1. Leading the week: The glass menagerie

The Weight, or as one onlooker called it at the opening, “Tiger, tiger, burning bright.” (Courtesy of the artists)

What happens when broken porcelain meets precision-cut glass? A ballerina sprouts tentacles, a tiger bears a bright emerald blister and a rhinoceros gains a head like a delicate bubble. In “First Day of My New Life,” a joint show by Feleksan Onar and Volkan Aslan at RADAR Istanbul, fractured figurines reemerge as hybrid beings — fragile, strange and quietly subversive.

Aslan, co-founder of Istanbul’s independent space 5533, sourced the chipped porcelain from his personal archive. “These figurines have been with me for so many years,” he said. “Seeing them with Feleksan’s interventions turned them into delightful surprises.”

The Curious. (Courtesy of the artists)

Onar sculpted new glass additions for the discarded bodies: delicate bubbles house a porcelain flower; a shepherdess figurine sits pretty with a scarlet-red sphere head that vaguely reminds you of Snow White. “The porcelain fragments passed through our dialogue — and through my glass manipulation — to become hybrid forms that speak to memory, transformation and shifting perceptions of value and beauty,” she said.

Curator Marcus Graf calls Aslan’s style “humorous, ironic and sarcastic,” a sensibility visible in his earlier assemblages of swan-headed dancers and dog-faced readers — playful forms that always carried a quiet bite.

Onar’s work, meanwhile, has long explored fragility and resilience. Her “Perched” series — 99 wingless glass swallows inspired by Syrian refugees — evolved into “Shattered” birds after the 2023 earthquakes, their cracks mended with gold, a la kintsugi. Her works have appeared in the Pergamon Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Dresden State Art Collections and, most recently, the Harvard Art Museums.

In this collaboration, repair becomes both method and metaphor — and the first day of a new life is never quite what it seems.

Address: RADAR, Buyukdere Caddesi No: 175 19th Floor, Levent

Dates: Until May 12

2. Word on the street: Beymen Brasserie

A touch of class – and French bistrot cuisine (Beymen Brasserie official photo)

Nestled in the heart of Nisantasi, Beymen Brasserie continues to set the standard for urban elegance. With interiors crafted by mistress-of-style Zeynep Fadillioglu and consecutive Gault & Millau mentions in 2024 and 2025, this timeless venue offers style and substance.​

The brasserie offers particularly good Cafe de Paris steak and mussels. Seasonal menu highlights include fresh herbs, Aegean greens and Mediterranean-inspired healthy options.​ Cocktail enthusiasts will appreciate its generous margarita and the visually stunning empress. It's just the right place to relax with a drink after visiting the nearby CI Bloom art fair this weekend.

Address: Abdi Ipekci Cad. Bostan Sok. No:23/1A, Nisantasi

3. Istanbul diary

“Dear Pinocchio” at Rami (Italian Culture Center photo)

• As part of the 2025 Italian Creativity Capitals of the World Festival, the Italian Cultural Center presents “Dear Pinocchio,” where leading Italian designers reimagine the beloved wooden mischief-maker. Set in the ornate halls of the newly restored Rami Library, the whimsical exhibition runs through May 28.
• Hopefully, you enjoyed the ArtWeeks last weekend. Now, it is time for CI Bloom, Istanbul’s premier contemporary art fair, to gather 25 galleries and four art initiatives. Located at Lutfi Kirdar Convention Center between April 17 and 20, it offers free entry to university students on April 17-18, 18:00-20:00.
• In collaboration with the Istanbul Policy Center and the History Foundation, the “Minerva Talks: Istanbul in History” series hosts Tommaso Stefini, social and economic historian of the early modern Ottoman Empire and the Mediterranean, on April 24 with a talk titled “Migration and Belonging in 17th-Century Galata,” moderated by Ayse Kose Badur and Ayse Ozil. Sign up here.

4. Book of the week: “Regards from the Dead Princess”

What happens when the fairytale ends in war and exile? In “Regards from the Dead Princess,” Kenize Mourad resurrects the life of her mother, Selma Rauf Sultan — a granddaughter of Sultan Murad V — tracing her journey from Istanbul’s vanished imperial courts to a solitary delivery room in wartime Paris. Published in 1987, the novel became an instant bestseller in France and has since been translated into 34 languages, including English and Turkish.

Mourad, now 85, remains a sharp-eyed journalist, royal descendant and outspoken idealist. On April 8, she received the French Legion d’Honneur, presented by fellow writer Amin Maalouf, the permanent secretary of the Academie Francaise.

Her later works include “The City of Silver and Gold” and “Our Sacred Land,” a powerful account of her 2002 journey through Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Recently reissued in Turkey — which Mourad now calls home — after the Israeli-Hamas war, the book chronicles the lives of Palestinians and Israelis living amid daily conflict. In her words, it is a plea for justice and a call for peace.

5. Istanbul gaze

The Silence of Time and Things, analogue photo, 2023. (Courtesy of the gallery)

A photograph of a seated woman — her face unseen, only her hands visible — anchors Sami Kisaoglu’s “Atlas of Silence,” on view at the Kairos Gallery on Mesrutiyet Caddesi, Beyoglu, now extended until April 19. Spanning 25 years of analog photography, the exhibition explores silence as both an emotional state and a spatial presence. Quoting philosopher David Le Breton, Kisaoglu reminds us: “Silence is not only an absence of sound but, above all, a modality of meaning.” The images are paired with texts by Turkish poets Enis Batur and Ahmet Soysal.

6. By the numbers

• With all the news of university student protests, you might be wondering just how many universities are in Turkey. Turkey is home to 209 universities  — 131 of which are public, and 78 private.
• More than one-fourth of those universities are in Istanbul, which houses 61 universities. Istanbul is also home to Turkey’s first university, Darulfunun, founded in 1900 during the Ottoman Empire and later renamed Istanbul University.