Istanbul in watercolor: Ayse Turemis’ living archive

Welcome to Al-Monitor Istanbul.

As Turkish parliamentarians battle over a new bill reshaping the ownership and management of foundation and cultural properties, one that could place more than a hundred Istanbul Municipality sites, including historic piers, under central government control, it feels apt to look again at the city’s varied facades.

This week, we turn our gaze to the artist who paints them with precision and love: Ayse Turemis and her exhibition, “Istanbul: Unfinished Painting.” We also stop by her favorite cafe in Cihangir, explore new exhibitions, catch the last days of the Biennial, and end with a sobering look at what Turkey throws away and what it doesn’t recycle.

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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: Istanbul, Unfinished

Ayse Türemis’ “Phanar Greek School” (Courtesy of the artist and IBB Kultur)

If you love Istanbul and are curious about its many facades, head to Mecidiyekoy Sanat to see the city through the detail-oriented eye and the sure hand of Ayse Turemis. A graduate of Istanbul’s Mimar Sinan University’s Stage and Costume Design Department, Turemis has spent more than two decades building an archive of the city’s architecture in watercolor, a medium as delicate as it is unforgiving of error.

Her solo exhibition “Istanbul: Unfinished Painting” brings together 77 drawings and two scale models under the auspices of Istanbul Buyuksehir Belediyesi Kultur and Miras, twin bodies that restore the metropolis’ heritage and then run them as cultural hubs. Turemis’ mini-retrospective revisits earlier projects such as “Galata Focus” (2003–06), “19th Century Theatres of Istanbul” (2007) and “the Pera Collection,” weaving them into one long love letter to Istanbul’s ever-shifting urban memory.

Before applying color, Turemis begins with precise pencil sketches: the measured grid of a theater facade, a doorway layered with history, the light catching a cornice at dusk. In conversation with Al-Monitor, she acknowledged the influence of British architectural watercolorist Alexander Creswell, whose renderings of Windsor Castle and other landmarks marry draftsmanship and memory. Inspired by his aesthetic, Turemis turned to her native city, determined to capture its fading theatres, shuttered schools and storied streetcorners with equal rigor.

Born in 1974 to an architect father and a teacher mother attentive to history, Turemis says she always knew she would paint. Her training in stage design sharpened not only her eye but also her sense of space — both interior and exterior. 

“When I start working on a subject, I research deeply,” she told Al-Monitor. “It becomes a universe of its own. But together, of course, they create a whole: one that witnesses the ever-changing landscape of an unbelievably rich and endless city.”

Besiktas Vocational School (Courtesy of the artist and IBB Kultur)

Beyond Istanbul, her dream is a larger canvas, from the Aegean coast to Anatolia’s archaeological towns: “I think both Istanbul and my other projects will keep me busy as long as my eyes can see and my hands can hold a brush.”

📍Where: Mecidiyekoy Mahallesi, Istanbul Cevre Yolu, Sisli

🗓️ When: Until Feb. 6, 2026

2. Word on the street: Firuzaga

Firuzaga Cay Bahcesi (Firuzaga website)

Known to most as Firuzaga Cay Bahcesi but officially named Asmali Kahve, this unassuming tea garden next to Firuzaga Mosque has watched Cihangir change hands and moods. Once a haunt of “madams” taking their afternoon coffee under the trees, it fell silent after the Greek exodus. (Read more about it in Nektaria Anastasiadou’s “A recipe for Daphne.”) Today, writers, artists and television folk sip tea there. It remains stubbornly itself, with tea, simit and conversation, and stands immune to the cafe gloss surrounding the quartier. This is precisely why Turemis loves it.

📍Where: Firuzaga Cami Avlusu Defterdar Yokusu, Cihangir

3. Istanbul diary

Elif Saydam’s “Hospitality” at Zihni Han, one of the venues of the 18th Istanbul biennial (Photo IKSV)

• The 18th Istanbul Biennial enters its final days, and we have written much about its agile and resilient works, captured under the name “Three-Legged Cat.” If time is tight, start at the Galata Greek School, a freshly restored 1885 landmark where artists such as Ipek Duben, Akram Zaatari and Simone Fattal thread memory and survival through classrooms and corridors. Then walk to Zihni Han to catch works by Abdullah Al Saadi, Karimah Ashadu and Elif Saydam amid its trading-floor geometry. Until Nov 23.
• Istanbul-born artist Renee Levi’s “Lekelee” floods the young Oktem Aykut gallery with bright color fields painted in a single, floor-spread flow, conceived specifically for the gallery’s space. Until Dec 13.
• At Kasa Gallery, “Secret, Mystery, and Hidden” pairs Gunes Terkol’s sewn tulle works with Guclu Oztekin’s playful, layered installations built from everyday objects in a show curated by Ali Akay. The gallery itself adds to the allure: housed in the former vaults of the early 20th-century Minerva Han, once home to the Bank of Athens and later insurance firms, the gallery used to be a vault, or “kasa” as it is called in Turkish. Until Dec 26.