Liquid Fear

Simbart Projects in Istanbul presents Liquid Fear (Akışkan Korku), a solo exhibition by Vahid Danaiefar, from 11 September to 31 October 2026. The gallery is at Çukurcuma Caddesi, Çukurcuma Apartmanı 40/A, Beyoğlu, and opens Tuesday to Saturday, 12pm to 6pm. Danaiefar is Iranian-born and works in painting, video and installation. The show is his first solo exhibition in Turkey and combines painted canvas, draped textile, a video monitor and wall-mounted objects.

The title comes from Zygmunt Bauman's book Liquid Fear, which the exhibition sets beside Freud's idea of the uncanny. Its subject is fear as a diffuse and lasting part of contemporary life, not a reaction to one identifiable threat. Danaiefar looks at how trust in familiar things wears away without any single break.

Objects, rooms and figures in the show stay recognisable, yet their meanings and the relations between them slowly shift. Home appears as more than a building: it is the place where habit gradually stops being reassuring. The works record what an event leaves behind, and do not depict the event itself. Danaiefar reworks the visual codes of daily life through small interventions.

Installation views show two canvases meeting at a wall corner and a painted textile draped over a wooden stand, with a video monitor on the floor. A large painting hangs above a table fixed to the wall, and a telephone is mounted on the wall with its cables trailing to the floor. The word liquid in the title refers to the changing character of fear as it spreads through different layers of everyday existence.