Some call Istanbul Airport “the world’s meeting point,” and honestly, for me, it feels like home. So whenever something new happens inside that space, I get genuinely excited. On my way to Zurich, I had the chance to walk into a beautiful exhibition at the airport. The idea alone stopped me in my tracks: forgotten items. Lost things. Abandoned stories. It hit close to home. I’ve lost so many hats, books, little personal treasures over the years. Who knows where they are now. Maybe some of them are quietly starring in this exhibition.
Under its mission to make art accessible, Istanbul Airport is hosting this new project through the IGA ART platform. The exhibition, titled “Things - Forgotten Items at the Airport,” brings the artistic side of Beyazıt Öztürk to travelers in transit.
The opening was attended by IGA CEO Selahattin Bilgen, members of the IGA ART executive board, airport executives and staff and plenty of curious passengers. The goal is clear: to turn the airport into more than a transit zone, into a cultural meeting place where art speaks a universal language.
It’s not surprising that Beyazıt Öztürk shows up with a project like this. Long before television made him a household name, he was trained at Anadolu University’s Faculty of Fine Arts in the Ceramics and Sculpture Department. While we watched him for years on screen, he was quietly continuing his “silent side” in the studio.
Curated by Marcus Graf from the IGA ART executive board, the project reminds us that travel isn’t only physical. It’s also mental and emotional. This time, Öztürk meets the audience not with jokes, but with forms, textures and memory. Öztürk favors a human scale, a quiet "heartbeat" of sincerity and conscience, inviting to pause and notice what we keep, what we misplace and what returns as memory.
At the heart of the exhibition stands a sculpture called “Thing.” It takes inspiration from one of the most unnoticed elements of an airport: the baggage conveyor belt. The walking routes of the terminal are transformed into one continuous line that twists and knots in space, almost like a giant reminder string tied around a finger. It’s about movement, but also about what gets left behind.
Instead of focusing on what passes through, Öztürk follows what stays. The forgotten. The stuck. The overlooked. As he puts it, he couldn’t accept memory as waste. So he turned these lost things into leading characters.
One of my favorite pieces is the sculpture made of stacked suitcases. Another detail I loved is seeing a version of Beyazıt Öztürk’s iconic TV format staged inside the airport like a studio set. It’s familiar and surreal at the same time. A showman’s world meeting a traveler’s world.
Before a flight, this feels like a gift. A pause. A breath. And honestly, Beyazıt Öztürk has been away from the spotlight for a long time. People missed seeing him. This exhibition doesn’t shout, but it connects. I think it’s going to be good for everyone who walks past it.
“Things” can be visited at the IGA Art Gallery located between the A-B Gates in the International Departures area of Istanbul Airport. The exhibition is free and open to all passengers and visitors. If you have time before boarding, let art travel with you too.
