Ali Kazma: Landscapes of the Mind

“Landscapes of the Mind” at Istanbul Modern Photography Gallery focuses on works revealing the writer’s mind through the metaphor of landscape painting by Ali Kazma (b. 1971), one of today’s leading lens-based artists, whose practice explores fundamental questions about the meaning of human activity. The exhibition features videos from the 2010s to the present focused on books and literature and a selection of photographs from the artist’s extensive archive.

The exhibition marks the debut of Kazma’s latest work, “Sumi” (2025), which documents one of the world’s oldest known ink productions, a 600-year-old tradition in Nara, Japan. Making their first appearance in Türkiye, “A House of Ink” (2023) and “Sentimental” (2022) offer an intimate glimpse into the apartment and archive of Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk. Also showing for the first time in Türkiye is “Alberto in Lisbon” (2024), which traces the relocation of Argentine-born writer and book historian Alberto Manguel’s library to Portugal. “Ali Kazma: Landscapes of the Mind” further includes “Calligraphy” (2013) and “Tattoo” (2013), which explore ink-based craftsmanship and were previously exhibited at the Pavilion of Türkiye during the 55th Venice Biennale, along with photographs documenting printing houses, libraries, and bookstores as spaces for books.

Curators: Öykü Özsoy Sağnak, Demet Yıldız Dinçer

Assistant Curator: Yazın Öztürk

About the artist:                                                                                                                                                                                                

Born in 1971 in Istanbul, Türkiye, Ali Kazma is a lens-based media artist living and working in Paris. He holds a Master of Arts degree from The New School in New York City.

Questioning social organization and the value of human activity, he highlights the relationship between the visible and the invisible aspects of reality by looking closely at the management of labor, time, bodies, gestures, space, and processes. Kazma’s attentive eye collects specific activities in a broad range of economic, industrial, scientific, medical, social, and artistic spheres.

He has an interest in spaces of social and cultural significance, places of production, industries, and handicrafts, as well as the details of machinery and ritualistic, repetitive daily tasks.

Ali Kazma, Sumi, 2025 (detail)