Mira Friedlaender who came to İstanbul during the beginning of the nineties on vacation, became impressed with the dolmuş which is the synthesis of the Turkish creativity and the American culture, and started taking pictures of them. The artist who returned to USA with a folder consisting of these photographs payed another visit to İstanbul to expand this portfolio. However, she discovered that the old dolmuş was replaced by the new minibuses and she decided to turn her work on this subject into an exhibition.

During Mira Friedlaender’s exhibition at Dulcinea  we could view the space of the gallery as a metaphore for the streets of a metropolis. In this environment, we find signs of the opposites: being / non-being, individual / collective, old / new, east / west, slow / fast, like traffic lights pointing to identity, culture and time.
Structuring around the presence and the absence of the Dolmuş with her manupulated photographs, she created the memory of a recent past. She contributed to this time when the Dolmuş has begun its own mythology.

OUT OF THE WALL

The dolmuş’s “home” is the streets of İstanbul, separating the two is impossible. With this in mind, and the new technologies of inkjetprinting and bus-wrap advertising, the possibility of bringing the images of the old dolmuş back to the streets of İstanbul became a reality. Through the generosity of Magic and the İstanbul Municipality the bus was produced and put into service in İstanbul, in conjunction with the show.
The purpose of the bus was not simply to advertise the show or the gallery, but to create a moving artscape in the street. Displaying images with an open meaning, involving a familiar object, raises questions and discussion about the visual environment that is so often taken for granted by urbanites.
Images  from the recent past, in contrast to the present and the ancient past of İstanbul, will bring each viewer to look at their surroundings differently.