Ayline Olukman at Ka, Ankara: “Tell Me About the Boundless Sea” — Photography, Painting and the Inner Life

Some artists travel to collect views. Ayline Olukman travels to be alone with herself — and then brings back images that feel less like postcards than like confessions. This November, that private sea washes up in Çankaya. Ayline Olukman’s photography and painting exhibition at Ka in Ankara, titled “Bana Uçsuz Bucaksız Denizi Anlat” (in French, “Parle moi de la mer immense” — Tell Me About the Boundless Sea), runs from 6 November to 26 December 2026 with the support of Institut français Türkiye.

From Strasbourg to Brooklyn and back

Olukman was born in Strasbourg in 1981 and still lives and works there. She graduated from the city’s École supérieure des arts décoratifs in 2005, and from 2006 to 2015 worked from a Strasbourg studio while making long, mostly solitary journeys that served as research for her photographs and texts. In 2015 she was artist in residence at Point B in Brooklyn and stayed in New York until 2018. Recognition followed: she was a finalist at Voies Off in Arles in 2018, held a residency in Shanghai that year, won the Verzasca Foto Festival Award in 2019 and was nominated for the Freelens Mentor Award in 2020.

Books are central to her work. Small Eternity (2012) and America (2015) were published by Médiapop, and La Mue (2019) was named by PH Museum among the best photobooks of its year. Her exhibitions have taken her to Paris, Bordeaux, New York, Brussels, Basel, London, Gothenburg, Shanghai and Istanbul.

Photography that behaves like painting

What makes Olukman unusual is that she refuses to keep her media apart. Photography, painting, drawing and writing are presented side by side as parts of a single practice, and the show brings all four together. The sources for this exhibition describe her practice as sensitive and introspective, returning again and again to intimacy, solitude, idleness and the way people relate to their surroundings. In Ankara, the curatorial emphasis falls on human fragility, the unconscious and inner life.

Three series, one interior sea

The exhibition draws together work from different moments of her career, organised around three series. La Mue — “the moult” — shares its title with her acclaimed 2019 photobook and suggests shedding a skin, a passage from one state to another. Nos vies sauvages (Our Wild Lives) and Obsidian, named after the dark volcanic glass, complete the selection. Read together under the title “Tell me about the boundless sea”, they propose the sea less as a landscape than as a metaphor for the vast, unmapped space inside each of us.

Ka and Ankara’s cultural corridor

Ka – Space for Visual Culture & Artistic Thinking sits on Cinnah Caddesi in Çankaya, the district that concentrates most of the capital’s galleries, embassies and cultural institutes. Its name signals its ambition: not just a sales room but a place for thinking about images. The support of Institut français Türkiye and the free admission makes it one of the more accessible international shows in Ankara this season. On Saturday 7 November at 17:00, Olukman will talk about her work in English at Ka — free and without reservation.

Why it matters

• For photographers: a model of how photobooks, writing and the exhibition wall can form one continuous practice.
• For painters: a chance to see how a lens-based artist uses paint and drawing to reach what the camera cannot.
• For collectors in Turkey: an introduction to a French artist with an international exhibition record and award-winning books, rarely shown in Ankara.

Visiting information

Ka, Cinnah Caddesi No: 1/B, Çankaya, Ankara. 6 November – 26 December 2026. Open Tuesday to Saturday, 10:00–19:00; closed Sunday and Monday. Free admission. Artist talk in English: Saturday 7 November, 17:00. Phone +90 312 465 01 25, email [email protected]. See our Ayline Olukman exhibition listing, the official Institut français Türkiye events page, and more shows on Upcoming Art Exhibitions in Leading Galleries.