ISTANBUL HALIC

DEVRİM ERBİL × ÖZİPEK

Istanbul – Golden Horn (İstanbul Haliç)

In Istanbul – Golden Horn, Devrim Erbil turns one of the city’s most ancient and symbolic waterways into a powerful abstraction of memory, movement, and time.

The Golden Horn is not depicted as geography here, but as a living artery. A deep, resonant red dominates the composition — a color Erbil often uses to signify history, intensity, and the emotional weight of Istanbul. It is the red of centuries layered upon one another: empires, trade, labor, prayer, and passage.

On the left, dense black linear structures rise like the city itself — compressed, restless, almost architectural in their insistence. These lines suggest Istanbul’s accumulated fabric: streets, walls, ships, and human traces stacked endlessly over time. The sweeping curve cutting through the composition evokes the Golden Horn’s unmistakable form, a fluid counterpoint to the rigid density of the city.

On the right, thousands of small, fragmented white forms scatter across the red field. They recall Erbil’s signature birds — symbols of freedom, continuity, and collective motion. Here they feel like memories released into space, echoing over water, dissolving into the city’s breath.

This work captures the dual soul of the Haliç: both a mirror and a divide, a place of arrival and departure, of reflection and transformation.

Özipek’s mastery elevates this vision into a woven monument. Translating Erbil’s intricate line language into silk requires absolute control — each knot preserving tension, direction, and rhythm. The silk surface animates the composition with light, making the city pulse subtly as the viewer moves.

Istanbul – Golden Horn stands as a testament to the rare union of a master artist and a master atelier. It is not merely an artwork, but a cultural document — one that carries Istanbul’s heartbeat into textile form.

For collectors, this piece represents more than ownership.
It is participation in a legacy where modern Turkish art and centuries-old craftsmanship meet — and endure.