İsmail Saray

Although Ismail Saray participated in numerous exhibitions across Turkey and Europe throughout the 1970s until the 1990s, with an increasingly political conceptual practice, he remained on the fringes of the art system, both locally and internationally. Saray's dissident stance against the system and critical attitude towards art's institutionalization, his status as a state employee, his bohemian lifestyle, self-imposed exile in the aftermath of the 1980 coup d'état, as well as the short-term memory of the historiography of art in Turkey obscured his significant artistic practice. SALT has been researching the context of Saray's life and practice since late 2012 with the conviction that the he holds a canonical place in the artistic and cultural environment of the 1970s and early 1980s in Turkey. His works have an international resonance with the advanced practices of the time in addition to displaying an acute sense of place. Comprised of documents and audio-visual materials, the artist's archive was processed and digitized by SALT and made available online at SALT Research--Supplied by vendor