Jakup Ferri’s “Dear Youth” at Ferda Art Platform, Istanbul: Embroidered Everyday Life from Kosovo’s Venice Artist

A bench in a park. A couple on bicycles. Children kicking a ball, musicians playing for no one in particular — and, now and then, a bird or an animal taking a seat beside them as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Jakup Ferri’s “Dear Youth” at Ferda Art Platform in Istanbul is built from scenes this ordinary, stitched in thread. The exhibition, on view in the gallery’s Main Hall in Teşvikiye from 22 October to 21 November 2026, is the Kosovar artist’s second solo show with Ferda Art Platform, after FUNK YOUR FUNK in 2023.

From Pristina to the Venice Biennale

Ferri was born in Pristina in 1981 and still lives and works there. He studied at the Faculty of Arts in Pristina and then at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, one of Europe’s most selective residencies for young artists. Early recognition came quickly: the Muslim Mulliqi Prize and the Artists of Tomorrow Award in 2003, the Kunstpreis Europas Zukunft in 2006 and the Buning Brongers Prize in 2008.

In 2022 he represented Kosovo at the 59th Venice Biennale with The Monumentality of Everyday, curated by Inke Arns. His work has also appeared at the Istanbul Biennial, Manifesta 14 in Pristina, EMST in Athens, the Kunsthalle Fridericianum, De Appel and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, and it is held by the Ludwig Museum in Budapest. Istanbul audiences who saw him at the Biennial will recognise the voice; this exhibition gives them the chance to see it at length.

Twenty-four works, one long series

According to the gallery’s catalogue, Dear Youth brings together 24 works dated between 2014 and 2025. Twenty-three are untitled embroideries from the ongoing series We We 2011–26, ranging from roughly 75 × 75 cm to a substantial 218 × 195 cm. Two of them — catalogued as JF065 and JF047 — were shown in Venice in 2022. The 24th work is a painting: an oil and ink on canvas from 2024, measuring 145 × 190 cm, which offers a useful counterpoint to the textiles and a glimpse of how Ferri’s line behaves in paint.

Leaving every work untitled is a deliberate choice. Without titles to anchor them, the scenes read less as illustrations of a story and more as fragments of a shared, ongoing life — the series title, We We, says as much.

The craft: a drawing that passes through many hands

Ferri’s starting point is drawing — fine, wiry lines that the catalogue connects to Balkan folk traditions, art brut, outsider art and cartoons. He does not stitch the works himself. Instead, the drawings are translated into embroidery, tapestry and carpet by artisans in Pristina and in villages in Albania, Suriname and Burkina Faso. The gallery presents this not as outsourcing but as part of the meaning: Ferri sees the textiles as a way of building community, and each finished piece carries the labour, rhythm and small interpretive decisions of the people who made it.

Up close, that is what to look for. Thread changes a drawn line in subtle ways — it thickens, wavers, catches light differently depending on the direction of the stitch. The distance between Ferri’s drawing and its embroidered translation is where much of the work’s warmth lives.

Everyday life as survival

The catalogue frames the new work as a turn away from “big” issues towards the everyday — and argues that this is itself a position. As the text puts it, “Ferri sees everyday experience as a strategy for survival.” For an artist from a city that lived through war and a long, uncertain aftermath, a picture of people simply cycling or sitting together on a bench is not trivial. It is a claim on normal life.

Then there is the magic. People turn into birds or animals; animals share benches and bicycles with humans. The gallery reads this through a posthumanist lens that dissolves the hierarchy between species. One does not need the theory to enjoy it, though: these are images with the gentle absurdity of a fable, and the lightness is part of their seriousness.

Why it matters in Istanbul now

Textile has moved firmly into the centre of contemporary art over the past decade, and Ferri is one of the clearest examples of an artist using it to connect drawing, craft and collective labour. For collectors, a group of 23 embroideries spanning more than a decade of the series — including works that travelled to Venice — is an unusually complete view. For painters and draughtsmen, the show is a reminder that a line can survive many translations and still remain recognisably personal. Prices are not published; contact the gallery.

Ferda Art Platform occupies a fifth-floor space on Maçka Caddesi in Teşvikiye, within walking distance of Nişantaşı’s galleries — an easy addition to an afternoon in the district.

Visiting information

Ferda Art Platform, Maçka Caddesi, Ralli Apt. 37/7, Kat 5, Teşvikiye, Şişli, Istanbul. 22 October – 21 November 2026. Open Tuesday to Saturday, 11:00–19:00; closed Sunday and Monday. Telephone +90 533 653 42 53, email [email protected].

Visit the gallery’s website and the exhibition catalogue, see our exhibition listing, and find more Istanbul and Ankara openings on Upcoming Art Exhibitions in Leading Galleries.