The Sky Was Candy

Arter in Istanbul presents The Sky Was Candy (Gökyüzü Şekerdendi), a group exhibition of works by 24 artists drawn from the Arter Collection. Curated by Selen Ansen, it runs in Gallery 4 from 24 June 2026 to 28 March 2027. The works include paintings, photographs, sculptures, installations and videos, some of them acquired by the collection only lately.

The exhibition is built around the ideas of home and homeland. Rather than a place of origin or a fixed address, home is treated as a relationship with space, time and memory that keeps shifting. The layout moves visitors back and forth between interior and exterior views. The title comes from "Songs I", a 1938 poem by E. E. Cummings.

Several works deal with exile, forced migration and confinement. In Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin's Heimat-Toprak (2001), the German word for homeland meets the Turkish word toprak, laid out in sequins on a panel five metres wide. His hotel signs from the series H-Fact: Hospitality/Hostility (2003 to 2007) carry invented names of cities such as Bombay, Palermo and Constanţa. In Adel Abidin's video Vacuum (2006), the artist tries to clear snow from a frozen sea with a vacuum cleaner. Stéphanie Saadé's We've Been Swallowed by Our Houses (2020) turns the plan of her Beirut flat into a maze embroidered on a tablecloth.

Ahmet Öğüt's Across the Slope (2008) is a 131 Mirafiori car, stretched like a limousine and left stranded on a ramp built inside the gallery. In Fatma Bucak's Enduring Nature of Thoughts (2018), dripping sounds rise from 122 white enamelled basins set across the floor. Inge Mahn's Chair Circle (2000) arranges seventeen chairs holding crystal glasses, which a moving rod touches in turn. Other works include Dan Graham's photographs from Homes for America (1966 to 1967) and Yıldız Moran's photographs of places across Turkey, taken from 1954 to 1957. The show also includes Melike Abasıyanık Kurtiç, Lene Adler Petersen, Ahu Akgün, Francesco Albano, Yto Barrada, Gökhun Baltacı, Mehtap Baydu and Elina Brotherus. Elif Erkan, Ayşe Erkmen, Karl Horst Hödicke, Arthur Köpcke, Fatoş İrwen, Sophia Pompéry, Gerhard Rühm and Stefan Wewerka complete the list.