Research Information System
This exhibition is an outcome of the process of re-reading and re-interpreting the Abdullah Gül Museum within the scope of the Visual Culture course. Originally constructed as the Power Plant of the former Sümerbank Textile Factory, the building underwent changes in use over time and remained inactive during the period when the factory was closed. With its current function as a museum, the structure has been approached not merely as a container for exhibiting objects, but as an exhibition apparatus that produces and directs ways of seeing through its industrial past, architectural memory, and contemporary interventions.
Throughout the semester, the museum was rethought around the concept of Ways of Seeing. Rather than a passive backdrop, the building was read as a visual device that constructs, guides, and restricts the gaze. Through conceptual lenses such as power, display, materiality, and narrative, the museum’s urban position, spatial organization, circulation scheme, surfaces, voids, thresholds, and exhibition strategies were discussed across multiple scales. These elements were reframed not as fixed givens, but as a visual field open to analysis, interpretation, and rewriting by the students.
The works presented in this exhibition were produced as Visual Dictionaries. These dictionaries, however, do not offer neutral or encyclopedic definitions. Each project became a subjective record shaped by an individual engagement with the museum, selected architectural and conceptual keywords, and specific representational strategies. While some dictionaries unfold through words and definitions, others construct more abstract, material, or spatial narratives. What they share is an intention to rethink the museum through distinct ways of seeing.
Extending from the building’s former condition as a site of industrial production to today’s constructed exhibition order, this exhibition makes visible how meaning is produced through architecture and display, and how this meaning is analyzed and decoded by designers.