ISTANBUL.- While Turkey’s struggle against the COVID-19 virus, T-ONE (Turkey - Old, New, Eternal) Association supports Turkish artists and Turkish art through digital platforms.

T-ONE Association is a non-profit organization with a general aim and mission for protecting and promoting Turkey’s cultural, historical and natural assets on international platforms.

Founded in 2014, T-ONE Association started working with a strong and capable team for initiating several projects which exhibit our shared values that unite societies with cultural heritage, historical and natural richnesses and marking Turkey on international platforms.

The Founding Goals of T-ONE Association is to protect, develop and promote the cultures, natural and historical heritage, and social and economic life of Turkey at the national and international levels by: Informing, educating and raising awareness about Turkey nationally and internationally, Ensuring the preservation and sustainability of our values through national and international activities, Carrying out activities for the conservation and promotion of our cultural heritage, Maintaining contact and collaborating with any national and international stakeholders, Being actively involved in Turkey’s cultural, tourism and promotion related strategies, Increasing the recognition of Turkey as a brand.

One of the formed active teams is the T-ONE Mosaic Road Committee which works to increase the worldwide awareness of the unique mosaics of Turkey.

Gastronomy Committee develops projects to raise about the unique historical and cultural culinary heritage of Anatolia and initiated the Signature Turkish Dishes Project into the agenda.

Another very active team is the T-ONE Art and Visual Arts Committee which supports Turkish Art and Turkish Artists in international platforms in order to increase the awareness for Turkish art.

The committee's latest project was realised in Antwerb during the European Fine Arts Fair (TEFAF) and the committee supported Turkish artists and the international contemporary art exhibition titled “The Crime of Adolf Loos” that launched on March 13, 2019 at the Axel Vervoordt which is one of the world's most important art platforms.

The curator of the exhibition was Alistair Hicks, the exhibition featured Turkish artists from different generations such as Fahrelnissa Zeid, Nilbar Gures, Asli Cavusoglu and Cansu Çakar, together with internationally acknowledged artists such as Guogu Zheng, Kamrooz Aram, Nikita Alexeev, El Anatsui, Senkichiro Nasaka, Waqas Khan and the Yangjiang Group.

The exhibition focused on Adolf Loos’s outlook on modernity. He was a famous architect and he has left fine buildings behind, but it was his badly thought theories that have caused a lasting problem. His claim that “ornamentation is a crime” gained prominence and dominance. This exhibition concentrates on artists attempting to contradict Loos’s view of modernity. They all embrace a broader, yet more radical view of what being modern is about. The exhibition has a strong Turkish contingent : Fahrelnissa Zeid, Nilbar Gures, Asli Cavusoglu and Cansu Cakar. Alistair Hicks considers Istanbul as a barometer for the art world.

The youngest of the Turkish artists, Cansu Cakar, has been given the most responsible role. She has created a six-page illustrated manuscript of the complete text of “Ornament and Crime”. It is only by reading every word does one realise how ridiculous his assertions were that have so distorted our lives. The final insult, as far as Loos is concerned was that the manuscript is unashamedly decorative, and she depicted the taste dictator with Papuan tattoos.

Asli Cavusoglu presented “The Place of Stone” installation in the gallery. In her research-driven practice, Cavusoglu takes up questions of history and belief by examining objects, images, and cultural symbols that have endured over time. National identity and the mechanisms through which political projects are constructed are recurring concerns. Many of her works address narratives of the past and suppositions of the present through oral histories, archives, artifacts, and raw materials, such as those used for color pigments. In her installation, Cavusoglu traced the history of the color blue across centuries and diverse geographies -from Central Asia to Africa and to Europe- following its transitions and shifting associations, from the sacred to the political and to the emotional.

Spanning performance, video and photography, Turkish artist Nilbar Gures’s previous bodies of work often dealt with constructing gender identity within patriarchal cultures. Her current series of photographs and videos, titled “Open Phone Booth”, focuses on a small village in the Eastern Anatolian region of Bingöl, Turkey, where her father grew up. Belonging to anethnic Kurdish and Alevi religious minority, the villagers face frequent interruptions of basic services such as running water, electricity and telephone networks.

Known for her enthusiastic and effective compositions, Fahrelnissa Zeid's unique painting language is too lively and rich to be reduced to a single style. At the age of 90, until her death on September 4, 1991, she continued her artistic life by giving lectures and taking part in cultural events.

Zeid's art practice can be classified as the early period with its figured compositions built in accordance with the miniature fiction, the maturity period with its geometric and free abstractionist works reminiscent of stained glass surfaces, and the late period, which mostly consists of portraits and psychological narration comes to the fore.

T-ONE Association will continue international collaborations in order to support contemporary Turkish artists on international platforms. More information: http://www.one.org.tr