İsmail Saray

The İsmail Saray book is the first monographic publication on the artist, bringing together artworks and selected documents from the İsmail Saray Archive at SALT Research that encompass his output from his student years in the 1960s up to the SALT exhibition in 2014. The book is edited by Duygu Demir and Sezin Romi, Senior Librarian and Archivist at SALT Research and Programs, and designed by Okay Karadayılar. Editions of the book are available in both Turkish and English. In addition to texts by the editors, the book includes essays by Antony Hudek, Begüm Akkoyunlu, and Yusuf Taktak, along with excerpts from interviews conducted with Mustafa Altıntaş, Handan Börüteçene, Cengiz Çekil, Ahmet Öktem, and Saray himself during the research process. While Demir’s article focuses on Saray’s artist books and other paper-based works, Hudek examines And Journal of Art and Art Education, published by Saray and his wife and collaborator Jenni Boswell-Jones, within the context of the art world in the UK. Akkoyunlu takes a look at a series of seminal exhibitions Saray participated in Istanbul from the 1970s to the 1990s, tracing the transformation of exhibition-making into an independent practice among artists. Romi’s interview with the artist around institutional historicization deliberates on the archival process and the making of the exhibition at SALT. Taktak’s exhibition review from 1979, written under a pseudonym, combined with the periodical testimonies from fellow artists, falls in line with the book’s fundamental purpose of providing a nuanced contextual background that allows for a more lucid assessment of Saray, as well as providing the grounds for historical analysis.