Childhood memories become exhibition at Baksı Museum

The Baksı Museum, established in the Bayraktar village of the northeastern province of Bayburt and the recipient of the 2014 European Council Museum Award, will host an extraordinary personal exhibition in 2017 from its founder, Professor Hüsamettin Koçan. 

Koçan said the museum, which has exhibited different concepts every season since its opening, would host an international exhibition he created with an inspiration from his homeland. 

He said that among the most important events slated to take place in 2017 would be his personal exhibition, which he initially prepared to coincide with his 70th birthday but had to postpone until his 71st birthday. He said the exhibition would be carried to an international level by Swiss curator Barbara Pollo. 

Koçan said his forthcoming exhibition would reinterpret through contemporary art his reminisces about the region where he spent his childhood. 

"Maybe it's the first time an artist is opening his own personal exhibition at a museum which he established himself," he said. 

 "In my childhood, the floor furnaces [tandır] were used to cook dishes and were used as a heater placed over a kilim [rug] in winter. We tried to do something new to depict it. I completely created the exhibition by looking at the four-leg structure of this floor furnace and the kilims covering it. This is what a 70-year-old remembers about his childhood life in the village. Because there is a long life spent here, this child had various dreams, listened to many tales and established relations," he said.

A migration story 

Koçan said another goal of the exhibition was to draw attention to the migrations that began in the 1960s in the region. 

"Actually, the main reason...