The paintings of Ala Alhassoun are as fresh as his memories of Syria, as he delicately draws ink onto a clean, white sheet of paper in the warm, late spring air, one fine afternoon in Istanbul's classy, artistic Çukurcuma district. He was a painter in Aleppo, where he worked with Kelimat Gallery, which also moved to Istanbul under the direction of Adnan Alahmad, now in the Üsküdar neighborhood of Kuzguncuk, the Bosporus shorefront village of gardens on the Anatolian side of the city.

Kelimat Gallery proudly represents Ala's uncle and first art teacher Ibrahim Alhassoun, whose unforgettable neoimpressionist aesthetic recalls the primordial, cavernous reaches of human expression, charged with subtly illustrative lines and dramatic shades of contrasting palettes. After his roundabout arrival to Istanbul in 2016, by way of Cairo, Gaziantep and Hatay, Ala has not exhibited with Kelimat, breaking entirely from his uncle's education to pursue distinct technical and conceptual approaches to painting. It shows in the six pieces at Metaphorical Spaces, titled "Silence" (Sukut, 2018), as his utterly unique style, choice of colors, and objective abstractions fascinate, especially when juxtaposed with his ideas.

"Ibrahim is more abstract than me, and more emotional. He always remembers his mother's dress, his village. For me, art happens in other ways. Most people like the colors of my works and find the simple concept interesting. It's not specifically Aleppo that I'm painting. Aleppo is a metaphorical concept. Aleppo is every city, all of the empty cities. Color for me is about offering the scene, and a new way to paint," said Ala Alhassoun at MARSIstanbul as he minded the space while painting at its street entrance on Bostanbaşı Avenue before entering beneath Arabica Trading House. "Watch color and power. In the empty city, we are not here. There is always change. My workshop changes all of the time too. I'm working all of the time everywhere. I like to paint outdoors in Istanbul. It's the city of light, not Paris [laughs]."

The distance of exile

Ala Alhassoun is a young artist. He exudes the immortal optimism of youth that no war has ever defeated. MARSIstanbul has that welcome quality of earthy verve, of spiritual warmth and creative camaraderie. It is a thin yet vitalizing slice from the population, where, for example, the active interrogations of one's more rebellious student years resurface to make life out of art, to stand for all that is good and right. That outlook has inspired Ala, who breathes deep in the artist-led space cultivated by the architect-based artist and writer Pınar Öğrenci, one of Turkey's most influential voices in the sphere of Istanbul's non-commercial art scene. She is clear, though, that however directly she might throw her spotlight onto a politically-sensitive subject, her controversial sources and social processes are intended purely for artistic ends.


Ala Alhassoun's painting series "Silence" (Sukut, 2018) is coprised of ink works on paper.

One of the more stunning pieces at Metaphorical Space is "Off-History," a nearly 20-minute video work by Selina Halvadaki. It exhumes black-and-white archival footage from the 1970s during one day in the life of far-right Greek nationalism in a show of pomp and ceremony as extreme as it is unsettling. The thundering passage of tanks is followed by fustanella-wearing armed parades, as president and archbishop meet to kiss an upraised, gilded bible and bless the sea for an Eastern ritual under the all-seeing eyes of the military. A construction glut is erected and finally abandoned to shadow the people in the cold, dark tragedy that then rose to unprecedented heights of shame. The bright, rectangular spectrums of Ala Alhassoun are curated beside the grim Halvadaki video that includes narrations by eyewitnesses who still cringe at the traumas of Greece in relationship to its histories of Civil War, dictatorship, and all forms of state failure. Alhassoun is careful to remind those who might appreciate his "Silence" series that Aleppo, and Syria, could be anywhere, that the issues are human, and so, are shared universally.

Visualizing the emptiness

"Our starting point was the video of Louis Henderson [titled "The Day Before the Fires" (2012)]. There were huge demonstrations in 1952 in Cairo. The video is about anti-colonialist demonstrations that became bigger and bigger. People burned the buildings that were symbols of Western imperialism, such as the opera, cinemas and malls. It was the time when colonialism finished and Nasser's regime began. And now, the Arab Spring was in Cairo again in the same streets and squares. Henderson depicted these streets and read a text about the demonstrations ["Class Struggle in Egypt 1945-1970" by Mahmoud Hussein]. Public space is a good tool to remember," said Öğrenci, who had recently traveled to Stockholm to show her works at Tensta Kunsthall, reminiscing as she enjoyed tea and conversation on a calm, breezy afternoon in the neighborhood around MARSIstanbul when she received an invitation to show her work at the Gwangju Biennale in South Korea in September. "My idea was to start from the First World War to nowadays. The first work ["Fire Diaries" (2012-4)] is by Sibel Horada. There are ashes on the ground, on a black square, with nails. This is about the İzmir Fire. It is important because it was 1922, during the Turkish War of Independence. Almost at the end of the war İzmir was burnt to finish the war."

Öğrenci spoke generously about curating Metaphorical Space in her delightful voice and colorful presence that seems capable of uplifting even the heaviest of silences. She spotlighted Ankara's architectura

l landscape in the 1930s with the work of Özge Topçu, the decolonization movements of Cairo in the 1950s and the aftermath of military coup in Athens during the 70s with the videos of Louis Henderson and Halvadaki respectively. "The cities are a symbolic way of establishing time and space structures, place hierarchies, and forms of domination that are institutionalized and legitimized through the very structures," she recently wrote via personal correspondence.

Empathizing with refugee artists in Istanbul, Öğrenci met Ala and invited him to show his work at Metaphorical Space so that he could network more effectively within the downtown scene. She stands at the forefront of integration in Istanbul, driving efforts to embrace and cultivate Syrian artists seeking asylum on route from the Middle East to Europe. As early as 2014, she profiled Toufic Hamidi, Amjad Wardeh, Naser Nassan Agha among others in an essay for the bilingual magazine Art Unlimited, sensitively delivering the common sense of life in the city and country for people from Tehran to Riyadh, Baghdad to Gaza, considering the integral role that Istanbul plays to encompass the entire region into its stable core, relatively strong and fit enough to carry the weight of its post-imperial history towards a brighter future where the feeling of being home and local identity has a wider base.

"Among the cultural centers of the East, Istanbul has become almost the only center where different people can live together. The tense and unstable relations among the Middle Eastern countries affect people's freedom of travel. [...] Given these circumstances, Istanbul, which is still a safe center, is bound to host all the refugees and help the artists, scientists, and intelectuals from the region heal," wrote Ögrenci after many personable and creatively engaged studio visits with Syrian artists in the center-periphery of Istanbul where they live and socialize mostly among themselves. "For all the artists, Istanbul, Damascus, and Aleppo all resemble one another. It is clear that they are not unfamiliar with the architectural elements and the urban planning of Istanbul. The oriental, unplanned development under the influence of communal relations and the process of modernization in the 20th century are common characteristics of oriental centers of culture and commerce such as Istanbul, Baghdad, Damascus, and Cairo. [...] The artists indicated that the social life in Istanbul resembled their lives in Syria very much and that they felt home when shopping, ordering food, or walking in the streets although they could not speak Turkish."

Ala walked out of the underground exhibition space at MARSIstanbul and looked up at a series of blurry photographs. It's faces are nearly obscured by a grainy effect. Only a pale, reclusive skin tone appears. The shut-in subjects observe the street below, as they did in 2012 by the Agos Newspaper building in Şişli to mark the 5th year death anniversary of Hrant Dink, the Armenian journalist who was assassinated outside of the offices where he worked at the minority newspaper. The photograph installation by Metehan Özcan is chilling. It conveys the fear of murder in broad daylight that continues to send shockwaves through the collective conscience of Turkey and the world. Ala lowered his gaze, and dappled more splashes of neon red and viridescent green onto a white leaf of paper. He watched the streets move, confident on his creative life path as a steady observer, despite his identity as a migrant. He stared back into the light reflecting off the passing cars that wind and whip through the narrow, cobblestone streets before returning behind the heavy, industrial door to descend below, immersing himself in the art of Metaphorical Space.