Silahtarag�a Art Powerhouse
Selma Stern
In Istanbul, Turkey, an industrial building has opened its doors as a museum of contemporary art. Pinpointed at the Golden Horn, the new cultural oasis is placed where Turkey’s first thermoelectric power plant, Silahtaraßa, halted its operations 20 years ago.
The museum’s first show, ‘‘Compression," was hosted in Track 05, where art lovers could enjoy works created by students of the Visual Communication, Concepts, Photography and Video departments of Istanbul’s Bilgi University’s Communication Faculty. The exhibition included graphic concepts and photography, traditional communication art, works on monitors and new media art like web concepts and 3-D computer animation. Amongst the presented artists were Orhan Cem Çetin, Muhittin Bilginer and Mahir M. Yavuz.
Silahtaraßa powerplant was built and started operation in 1913, and for some time it supplied entire Istanbul with electricity. Since it has been fashionable to transform industrial buildings into museums–the Musee d’Orsay in Paris was a train station, Newcastle’s Baltic Art Museum was a manufactory, New York’s Dia Center was a printing house and London’s Tate Modern was a powerhouse, changing from Bankside Electric Powerplant into one of the world’s most popular museums for the latest trends in art–Silahtaraßa powerplant is no exception.
A different approach has been taken in the case of the Silahtaraßa site; and it has been decided to maintain both the building and inside tackling equipment, and to establish an ‘energy and natural resources museum explaining the production of energy. Contemporary art shall be shown hand in hand nested in this environment.
It is envisaged to embrace contemporary art from miscellaneous fields such as painting, sculpture, design, photography, video, cinema, performance, music, architecture and conceptual art, and to provide a platform for both national and international artists.
