Does It Have a Balcony? | 2019

Tophane-i Âmire CAC Single Dome Hall

May 23-June 9

Does It Have a Balcony? Performance video, which consists of performance images on May 23, 2019, accompanied the exhibition. Video by Selin Yağmur Sönmez & Aras Yazıcı.

Space organization view of Does It Have a Balcony? May 23-June 9, 2019.

Installation view of Does It Have a Balcony? May 23-June 9, 2019.

Exhibition view of Does It Have a Balcony? May 23-June 9, 2019.

Trunk Room, 2019, Installation of digital print on canvas, 280 x 358 cm.

Opening performance view of Does It Have a Balcony? May 23-June 9, 2019.

Exhibition view of Does It Have a Balcony? May 23-June 9, 2019.

Transported Balcony, 2019, Digital print on canvas, 250 x 600 cm.

Rosery Balcony, 2019, Installation of digital print on canvas, 180 x 305 cm

Exhibition view of Does It Have a Balcony? May 23-June 9, 2019.

Ebrus’ Balcony, 2019, Digital print on canvas, 233 x 616 cm.

Ebrus’ Balcony (detail), 2019, Digital print on canvas, 233 x 616 cm.

Installation view of Does It Have a Balcony? May 23-June 9, 2019.

Panoramic installation view of Does It Have a Balcony? May 23-June 9, 2019.

Performance photographs by Aras Yazıcı

Does It Have a Balcony?

May 23-June 9, 2019

Lebriz Rona’s fifth solo exhibition, Does It Have a Balcony?, which examines our new experiences of dwelling through her ongoing exploration of space and architecture, was held at the Tophane-i Âmire Tek Kubbe Hall between 23 May and 9 June 2019. In this exhibition, Rona constructed her relationship with space through life-size balconies of Istanbul’s wooden mansions, historic reinforced-concrete buildings, and apartment blocks.

In her 2011 exhibition Transported House at Daire Gallery, Rona transformed moving boxes into metaphors for the house by integrating them with forms placed on their surfaces. In Does It Have a Balcony?, she approaches the balcony as the threshold through which everyday life opens onto nature and the street. The exhibition questions the gradual disappearance of balconies from architecture as a consequence of Istanbul’s urban transformation—and how this has transformed our relationships with birds, trees, flowers, sunlight, wind, the street, neighbourhood relations, and everyday life—while also drawing attention to the balcony as a multifunctional space continually redefined according to the changing needs of daily life.

Developing her ideas through drawing, Lebriz Rona prepared the initial studies for the exhibition in a large black sketchbook, rendering them to scale as though they had already been installed within the exhibition space. Fifteen drawings selected from this sketchbook were reproduced on paper and presented in 2018 under the title Preliminary Works at Blogspot, an independent art space in Balıkesir. Rona’s desire to exhibit the balconies at their actual scale led to a lengthy search for a suitable venue. Once Does It Have a Balcony? was confirmed for the Tophane-i Âmire Tek Kubbe Hall, she produced nine selected balconies as full-scale colour digital prints on vinyl.

Rather than presenting a completed exhibition, the opening took the form of a performance that made the exhibition’s process of construction visible. The life-size works were installed before the audience in a continuous sequence accompanied by rhythmic percussion. Conceived as an act resembling the construction of a building, the performance staged the exhibition’s own coming into being. In this way, installation ceased to refer solely to the placement of artworks within a space and became visible as a physical process unfolding in real time before the viewer.

Alongside the completed works, the exhibition also included sketchbooks, notebooks, rulers and the exhibition maquette, revealing the creative process behind the project. Visitors were therefore able to follow not only the finished works but also the traces of thinking, planning and making. A video documenting the opening performance was shown throughout the exhibition.

Does It Have a Balcony? focuses on the gradual reduction, functional erosion and, in some cases, the complete disappearance of the balcony from Istanbul’s architecture as a result of urban transformation. By foregrounding the balcony as the architectural element that frees domestic life from isolation and enables relationships with nature, the street and everyday life, the exhibition also makes visible a disappearing way of life.