'Behind Mount Qaf' exhibition at Istanbul's Arter gallery

Istanbul's Arter gallery in Beyoğlu presents Turkish artist Canan's solo exhibition entitled "Behind Mount Qaf."

The exhibition brings together new works she had produced especially for this exhibition along with a number of earlier works, some of which have not been shown before. Unfolding across Arter's three gallery floors, "Behind Mount Qaf" constitutes a comprehensive overview of the artist's practice.

The exhibition is named after the legendary Mount Qaf of Arabic and Persian cosmology and includes works produced through various media, such as sculptures, photography, print, embroidery, videos, installations and miniatures.

"Behind Mount Qaf" proposes a reading of the artist's practice through the themes of "heaven," "purgatory" and "hell." Her new works focus on dualisms such as light/shadow, good/bad, internal/external, reality/imaginary, lightness/darkness, and tackle the repressed aspects of the human psyche in the form of supernatural creatures, the jinn and archetypical figures, culminating in a multidimensional, mystical, symbolic and rather enticing universe. 

Among the works, the photograph titled "Cybele," which greets the viewer on the ground floor, is a self-portrait exhibited for the first time and represents the mother goddess through the artist's own body.

Miniatures titled "Shahmaran"  and "Şehretün'nar," the mother of all jinn, once again depicted by the artist using her own face, guide the viewer through different states of consciousness on the three exhibition floors conceptualized as heaven (ground floor), purgatory (floor 1) and hell (floor 2). 

The first of the many spatial installations in "Behind Mount Qaf," the "Animal Kingdom" is a site-specific work produced for this exhibition and...