Dressing the canvas

Welcome back to AL-MONITOR Istanbul.

This week, we trade Istanbul’s familiar tempo for Izmir’s slower, more porous rhythm again to explore what’s going on in Turkey’s third city and ancient Levantine port. At Arkas Art Center, fashion steps out of the frame, revealing how clothes carry entire social scripts, from 19th-century silhouettes to modern identities. Then we will stop over at a new museum in Izmir and hop on to the galleries in Istanbul.

Given the current affairs agenda, we invite you to leaf through a book on Turkey and Iran on the way the two countries are seen, compared and narrated in relationship to one another.

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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: When Fashion Steps Out of the Frame

“Sweet Laziness” by August Toulmouche (Photo Nazlan Ertan)

At Arkas Art Center, painting refuses to stay still. In "Mode et Peinture" ("Fashion and Painting"), figures slip out of their frames as garments once confined to canvas are reconstructed and returned to the room.

Bringing together works from the Arkas Collection and the French costume archive “La Dame d’Atours,” the exhibition traces the ever-present dialogue between art and dress. These are not theatrical costumes but precise translations, fabrics and silhouettes recreated with period fidelity, allowing a dress in a painting to be seen in three dimensions.

From the neoclassical restraint of the early 19th century to the sharper lines of the 1940s, fashion emerges as a social script. As the bourgeoisie rises, men’s clothing settles into sobriety, while women’s bodies are reshaped by crinolines, bustles and corsetry in an unseen architecture dictating posture, movement and presence.

Dress codes and their reflections in paintings (Nazlan Ertan)

Beyond salons, the exhibition turns to everyday life. Painters captured workers, travelers and the rhythms of the modern city, while European fascination with the “Orient” — from Kashmiri shawls to so-called Turkish styles — reveals fashion as exchange rather than identity.

What remains is less a history of clothing than a study of translation between canvas and cloth, ideal and reality. In that shift, painting stops depicting fashion and begins, quietly, to wear it. Personal note: Please linger over wedding dresses, remembering that it is only during the reign of Napoleon I that they turned white, and do buy the catalogue, full of great information.

Date: Until July 26

Location: Ataturk Caddesi, 1380 Sokak No:1, Alsancak, Izmir

More information here.

2. Word on the street: Madame Prokopp

Nuts over pears and lor cheese (Madame Prokopp)

Named after Klara Prokopp — often cited as Izmir’s (and perhaps Turkey’s) first female brewer — the Madame Prokopp pub/gastro bar pairs heritage with a knowing wink. Set in a restored space, it serves solid, unfussy plates alongside craft beers that nod to the city’s Levantine past. The walls double as a rotating gallery, giving the place an easy cultural hum.

Location: 1483 Sok. No:8  Alsancak

3. Istanbul diary

Archaeological pieces in the Yasar Museum (Yasar Museum)

• Yasar Museum opens in a sensitively restored 1895 flour factory in Alsancak, bringing new life to one of the city’s industrial relics. Its wide-ranging collection spans modern artworks, archaeological pieces and regional carpets, offering a layered reading of Aegean cultural memory.

• From Izmir to the Michelin-starred resort town of Urla, “Crafted Nature” opens as part of the traditional March Herb Festival, turning attention to sustainable fashion and textile practices through a nature-conscious lens at Urla Municipality City Archive and Museum. Until April 12.

• Back in Istanbul, Bakirkoy Sanat hosts Gulgun Basarır’s solo exhibition “Encounters,” a meditation on space, rupture and destruction through layered, abstract compositions. Until June 28.

• SALT Beyoglu continues its “Cercop” (“Trash”) program with talks and workshops exploring reuse, exhibition design and institutional memory, featuring Asli Altay, Can Altay and Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli. Until April 4.