“Harita ve Topraklar” (The Map and The Territory) at Labirent Sanat, Istanbul: Ten Artists Reclaim the Body

“The map is not the territory,” the philosopher Alfred Korzybski warned in the 1930s. In 2010 Michel Houellebecq turned the phrase into the title of a novel in which the map has become more interesting than the land it describes. “Harita ve Topraklar” (The Map and The Territory), the new group exhibition at Labirent Sanat in Istanbul, open from 3 November 2026 to 2 January 2027, starts from that inversion and asks what is left of the body when the map swallows everything.

The argument of the show

The exhibition text is unusually polemical. It describes a “techno-feudal” order that reduces the body to two-dimensional surfaces and data, and argues that the map has now absorbed both flesh and land. Against this, the ten artists treat thinking not as weightless information on a screen but as something bodily and raw. Skin is not a property line to be drawn on a map; it is a permeable surface of contact that takes part in the circulation of air, water and heat.

It is a timely position. Much recent painting has absorbed the look of the screen — flat colour, digital gradients, images built for phones. “Harita ve Topraklar” deliberately goes the other way, toward the unfinished, the deformed and the folds of flesh.

The artists

The exhibition brings together Dila Kasapoğlu, Dilara Göl, Emel Ezal, Emre Celali, Hüseyin Rüstemoğlu, Melis İmrağ, Merve Gözde Bingül, Sena Gökçeoğlu, Yasin Öztekin and Zeynep Abacı. It is the first portfolio exhibition to come out of the collaboration between Sanat Okur and Labirent Sanat, which makes it something of a statement of intent: a survey of figurative positions the two partners want to champion. Some of the names will already be familiar to regular visitors — Emre Celali showed his solo exhibition “Hatıra Ormanları” at Labirent in September and October 2026.

Material as an active agent

If there is one thread that unites the works, it is material. The listing names fragile paper, flesh-like layers of acrylic and oil paint, and pencil marks that are carved, scraped and stained into surfaces, alongside drawing, sculpture and installation. The curatorial text insists that material is not a passive carrier of ideas but an agent that resists time. In practice, that means looking closely: the scratch in a graphite surface, the way a layer of oil sits on top of acrylic, the sag of paper on a wall. This is a show that rewards standing close rather than photographing from across the room.

Labirent Sanat and the Tepebaşı scene

Labirent Sanat occupies a floor on Tepebaşı Caddesi in Beyoğlu, a few steps from the Pera museum district and the galleries clustered between Şişhane and Tophane. Its programme leans toward younger and mid-career Turkish artists, with recent solo shows by Emre Celali and Nesli Türk. A ten-artist figurative exhibition fits that profile and offers a snapshot of what a new generation in Istanbul is doing with the human figure.

Why it matters

• For collectors: group shows of emerging artists are one of the best ways to discover names early and compare practices side by side.
• For painters and art students: a concentrated study of how surface, scraping and layering can carry meaning in figurative work.
• For visitors to Istanbul: a free, thoughtful exhibition in central Beyoğlu that runs right through the holiday season.

Visiting information

Labirent Sanat, Çatma Mescit Mah. Tepebaşı Cad. No:56 K:2, 34430 Beyoğlu, Istanbul. 3 November 2026 – 2 January 2027, Tuesday to Saturday 11:00–19:00, free admission. Phone +90 531 712 45 25, email [email protected]. See our Harita ve Topraklar listing, the official Labirent Sanat exhibition page, and more shows on Upcoming Art Exhibitions in Leading Galleries.