Exhibition 'Empty Fields' at SALT Galata Confronts Armenian Catastrophe Through Archival Gaps
The 'Empty Fields' exhibition, held at SALT Galata in Istanbul and curated by Marianna Hovhannisyan, took place from 6 April to 5 June 2016. It explored the 1915 Armenian genocide through archival materials from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, highlighting the omissions in records concerning Armenian and Greek Christian populations within the Ottoman Empire. A significant feature was the recreated empty museum of Anatolia College, initially curated by Johannes 'John' Jacob Manissadjian, whose 1917 catalogue symbolized a funerary mask for a lost collection of 7,000 specimens. The exhibition linked historical atrocities to the ongoing denial by the Turkish state under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, also referencing the German parliament's acknowledgment of the genocide in 2016.
Key facts
- Exhibition 'Empty Fields' was held at SALT Galata in Istanbul from 6 April to 5 June 2016.
- Curator Marianna Hovhannisyan focused on the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions archive.
- The exhibition addressed the Armenian genocide of 1915, referred to as Aghed (the Catastrophe).
- It featured the recreated, empty museum of Anatolia College from Merzifon, originally curated by Johannes 'John' Jacob Manissadjian.
- Manissadjian's 1917 handwritten catalogue documented a 7,000-specimen natural science collection lost in the genocide.
- The essay 'Empty Fields and Crying Stones' by Helena Vilalta was published in Afterall Journal Issue 42 on 21 September 2016.
- The analysis centers on Armenian writer Zabel Essayan's 1911 book 'In the Ruins' about the 1909 Adana massacres.
- The exhibition linked historical denial to contemporary Turkish politics under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Entities
Artists
- Zabel Essayan
- Marcel Broodthaers
- Marc Nichanian
- Helena Vilalta
- Marianna Hovhannisyan
- Johannes 'John' Jacob Manissadjian
- Hagop Oshagan
- Hayg Toroyan
- Tigrane
- Fareed Armaly
- Saidiya Hartman
- Walter Benjamin
- Judith Butler
- Taner Akçam
- Raymond Kévorkian
- Léon Ketcheyan
- G.M. Goshgarian
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
- Abdul Hamid II
Institutions
- SALT Galata
- Afterall Journal
- American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions
- Anatolia College
- Armenian patriarchate of Constantinople
- Committee of Union and Progress
- Aras Publishing
- University of California Press
- Metropolitan Books
- I.B. Tauris
- Phébus
- Gomidas Institute
- American Research Institute in Turkey
- Ankara University
- Hrant Dink Foundation
- Kontext Kunst
- The MIT Press
- Columbia University Press
- New Left Books
- German parliament
Locations
- Istanbul
- Turkey
- Adana
- Cilicia
- Anatolia
- Ottoman Empire
- Constantinople
- Scutari (Üsküdar)
- Paris
- France
- Sofia
- Bulgaria
- Tbilisi
- Georgia
- Baku
- Azerbaijan
- Tehran
- Iran
- Baghdad
- Iraq
- Basra
- Cairo
- Egypt
- Soviet Armenia
- Merzifon
- Black Sea region
- Tarsus
- Van
- Trebizond
- Erzurum
- Cyprus
- Der Zor
- Raqqa
- Levant
- Mesopotamia
- Boston
- United States
- Thessaloníki
- Greece
- Gezi Park
- Beyoğlu
Sources
- Afterall —