The most striking change in the exhibition is the inclusion of Casper Faassen's Reassembly series in place of Alejandro Almanza Pereda's *Fear of Emptiness*. Faassen's Reassembly series, consisting of six works, proposes a new reading based on the circulation and displacement of cultural assets.
Pera Museum's collection exhibition, *Intersecting Worlds: Ambassadors and Painters*, is meeting visitors again with its updated look. At the heart of the changes in the selection is Casper Faassen's six-piece contemporary art installation, *Reassembly*, which replaces Alejandro Almanza Pereda's *Fear of Emptiness*. The exhibition is also enriched with two watercolors by Louis-François Cassas and *Conversation* by the Vanmour School.
With its new look, *Intersecting Worlds: Ambassadors and Painters* addresses the multifaceted encounters between the Ottoman Empire and Europe from a broader perspective. This structure, where diplomacy, art, and cultural heritage intertwine, offers a deeper interpretation with the works brought back to light.
Pera Museum is open Tuesday to Saturday from 10:00 to 19:00, and Sundays from 12:00 to 18:00. On Fridays, as part of "Long Friday," all visitors can enter for free between 18:00 and 22:00, and on Wednesdays, as part of "Young Wednesday," all students can visit the museum for free.
The most striking change in the exhibition is the replacement of Alejandro Almanza Pereda's "Fear of Emptiness," which first appeared at the 15th Istanbul Biennial, with Casper Faassen's "Reassembly" series.
"Fear of Emptiness," exhibited since 2017, established a powerful visual language that made visible the tension between construction and destruction. Faassen's "Reassembly," consisting of six works, proposes a new interpretation based on the circulation and displacement of cultural assets.
A New Layer on Displacement and Memory
Faassen traces the displacement of artifacts collected from different geographies throughout history; he develops a perspective that reverses this movement. His visual language, created with layered and translucent surfaces, leaves images suspended rather than fixed; thus, he adds a contemporary space for discussion to the exhibition's historical framework through concepts such as memory, loss, and belonging. This new layer allows Intersecting Worlds to go beyond being merely an exhibition representing the past; it brings together the perspectives of the past and the present on the same plane.
With its updated face, the exhibition is enriched with works that have long been absent from the selection. The watercolors by French artist Louis-François Cassas, reflecting his observations of Istanbul and different geographies—"The Acropolis of Athens and the Temple of Zeus of Olympus" and "The View of the Sultanahmed Mosque from Kadıköy Point"—reveal how travel, exploration, and visual recording practices intertwined in the 18th and 19th centuries, creating a layer of meaning that deepens through collaboration with Faassen's Reassembly installation.
The exhibition includes a work titled "Conversation" by the Vanmour School, which focuses on productions that address the daily life and social scenes of Istanbul from a Western perspective. These works are among the important examples that make visible the forms of cultural transmission of the period and how the image of the East was constructed in Europe.
This selection from the Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation Orientalist Painting Collection, guided by art, navigates the winding paths of diplomatic history, bringing to light fascinating personalities. Ambassadors and painters continue to speak through the silent yet rich and colorful language of paintings, recounting their eras even today.
From its early periods, the Ottoman Empire established intense relations with European states. For Westerners, a mixture of fear and curiosity led to a political necessity: to gain a closer understanding of this great military power and political authority located right next door. This encounter of different cultures undoubtedly produced its most enduring results in the field of art.
War, the search for alliances, the development of trade, and conflicts over status were the most important reasons for this intense diplomatic traffic. Spanning a vast geography, the Ottoman Empire, especially until the 19th century, received more ambassadors than it sent to other countries, hosting them with its own unique traditions. Western ambassadors documented the cities, traditions, social, administrative, and military structures, particularly in Istanbul, and for this purpose, they also benefited from the testimony of paintings. The works commissioned by the ambassadors transformed into collections adorning the walls of European castles and into engraved books, creating a vast visual repertoire of the Ottoman world. Ottoman ambassadors sent to European countries also became the subjects of monumental portraits painted by leading European artists of the time, immortalizing the memory of this important visit in paintings.
(Source: https://www.arkeolojikhaber.com/haber-p)