Kasa Gallery presents latest exhibition on discovery of ‘self’ within body and mind

The history of thought is full of contradictions, dilemmas and predicaments of separation of mind and body. Maybe the most controversial of all is the mind-body dualism that argues mind and body are separable.

Somehow, within this belief, humankind discovers the relation between mind and matter or subject and object. We tend to believe that body and soul are separable facts that help us to exist. Many questions arise from this belief, such as whether the body has any instrumental role in the creation of the self, whether there is any forthright relation between body and soul and many more…

The exhibition "Show Me Color" at Istanbul's Kasa Gallery, curated by Yekhan Pınarlıgil, is questioning this relation in a very delicate way. Artists Çınar Eslek and Marguerite Bornhauser and late artist Semiha Berksoy, an internationally acclaimed and significant figure in Turkey's modern cultural history who passed away in 2004, are actors of this question. In each art piece, we see a way of self-discovery through the body, self, mind and soul. In a way, the curator asks us, do we always reflect what we have inside or vice versa.

The body is both a limit and a beginning for existence. In Eslek's artworks, we see how the inner world of us reflects onto the outer world. Eslek uses pagan-like small sculptures to depict her way of seeing the self, opening a new way of understanding the body and the self. She believes the body is a way to leave traces on; the body is a place to keep shadows and instincts.

"I have tried to reflect a way of expressing primordial instincts via these pagan sculptures," Eslek said. On the other hand, she tries to discover that beliefs and disbeliefs can change and how we internalize meta-narratives within these beliefs. Her...