Suspended book

From 30 October to 27 December 2025, Book as Work, curated by Umut Altıntaş at Hayy Open Space, brings together works by Umut Altıntaş, Alparslan Baloğlu, Emirkan Cörüt, Daniel Eatock, Gizem Hız, Amir Jamshidi, Vedat Ozan, Yağız Özgen, Monica Papi, Sarah Belle Reid, Ulaş Uğur, Gül Yavuz, Saliha Yavuz and Caner Yılmaz, and we examine the exhibition, which repositions the book beyond its role as a mere vehicle of text, foregrounding it instead as a material, political and spatial entity

Words: Esra Melike Çuluk

Photos: Cevahir Akbaş & Umut Altıntaş

Yapıt Kitap, Exhibition view, Hayy Open Space, 2025

The book is an object we often encounter in everyday life without giving it much thought. It is read, carried and stored, and these gestures rarely prompt us to ask what a book actually is. We seldom reflect on why we continue to keep a book once it has been read, why we still hold on to it, and why it remains in our homes. Yet this very habit suggests that, intuitively, we know a book is not merely a vehicle for content. When its textual meaning comes to an end, the book can become an object of memory: its content recedes, leaving us alone with its material presence. The same object, however, can be entangled with entirely different meanings in another context. A book that once belonged to personal memory may, at another moment, become a prohibited object, something to be hidden or destroyed. A book can be both a cultural commodity set into circulation and, at the same time, a perceived threat whose circulation is restricted. This tension reminds us that the book is not a one-dimensional object, but one that carries a historical and political charge within its very existence. Its form, cover, printing language and material are not merely aesthetic choices; they become decisions that shape how the book is perceived in the public sphere. All of this, of course, is inseparable from economic realities. Printing is an expensive undertaking. Paper, production, distribution and circulation are all materially charged processes. Anyone, whether an individual or an institution, who seeks to prevent an idea from vanishing and to render a word enduring must also possess the capital that makes this possible. The book therefore stands not only as a marker of thought, but also as a sign of the economic power required to fix that thought in place.

Held at Hayy Open Space between 30 October and 27 December 2025, Book as Work, curated by Umut Altıntaş, presents a selection bringing together works by Alparslan Baloğlu, Emirkan Cörüt, Daniel Eatock, Gizem Hız, Amir Jamshidi, Vedat Ozan, Yağız Özgen, Monica Papi, Sarah Belle Reid, Ulaş Uğur, Gül Yavuz, Saliha Yavuz and Caner Yılmaz. As stated in the exhibition text, the show transforms the book from an object that is “read” into a presence that is “watched,” inviting viewers to question what the act of reading has become. Located on a dead end street in Kemeraltı, İzmir, Hayy Open Space may appear to passersby as a sterile and unfamiliar whiteness, yet once inside, the space confronts us with a familiar object, the book. This familiarity, however, is deceptive, because here the book does not exist in the form to which we are accustomed.

Left: Umut Altıntaş, İmkânsız bir kitap için kapak önerisi, 25 editions, 300 g grey cardboard, 17 × 24 × 2 × 0 cm, 2025

Right: Ulaş Uğur, Tek sayfa kitap, Cover: 21 × 29.7 cm, 590 g black cardboard, Page: 120 cm, 200 g first grade paper, 2024

The point of departure of the exhibition is directly linked to Umut Altıntaş’s academic work. Altıntaş’s master’s thesis discusses the position of the graphic designer through the distinction between author / yazar / müellif. In this study, the yazar refers to the person who writes the text, while the müellif is defined as the subject responsible for the work as a whole. The term author, on the other hand, is etymologically related to authority and designates the figure who constructs, governs and carries the production process from beginning to end. In Türkiye, while the graphic designer was largely positioned as an “operator” until the 1990s, the 2000s mark the first steps of a shift towards an author figure who establishes the very existence of the book. Altıntaş’s Proficiency in Art dissertation, completed in 2018 and forming the conceptual basis of this exhibition, titled Yapıt (olarak) Kitap: Kitabın Fiziksel Varlığı Üzerine Kavramsal Okumalar, extends this trajectory by posing another question: “What remains of the book when its content is removed?” This study approaches the book not as a carrier of information, but through its material, form, printing, volume and spatial presence. Altıntaş’s work in the exhibition, İmkânsız Bir Kitap İçin Kapak Önerisi, constitutes a spatial response to the question he formulates in his thesis. A cover experiment whose inner pages can never exist and whose spine collapses into itself demonstrates that the book is defined not only by its content but also by its structural properties. The cover here functions less as a representation than as a sign of an impossible and uncompletable whole. Rather than offering direct answers to these questions, the exhibition Yapıt Kitap articulates them within the space through the distinct production practices of thirteen artists.

Left: Gizem Hız, Tasnif, Site specific installation, 2025 (This installation is a version of Gizem Hız’s 2019 work Zamanla, re adapted specifically for the Book as Work exhibition using the books from the Hayy Open Space archive.)

Right: Vedat Ozan, “Kokular Kitabı”nın Kokusu, Text, 29.7 × 42 cm, 2025

Upon entering the space, one encounters a built in wall library on the right. Independent of the exhibition, this library already exists within the gallery and promises access and readability, yet the books it contains are reversed through Gizem Hız’s intervention titled Tasnif. The books remain on the shelves, but their spines face inward and cannot be read. Knowledge is present, but access is denied. The books are not arranged at random, but ordered according to their colour tones, from the lightest to the darkest. By suspending readability, this arrangement detaches the book from its textual content and reconstitutes it as a visual and perceptual whole. This gesture does not destroy the book, but deliberately renders it inoperative. When readability, the book’s most fundamental quality, is placed on hold, physical attributes such as colour, surface and order come to the fore. The book is thus transformed from a text to be read into an object to be looked at, giving rise to another question: is an unreadable book still a book? 

The other works in the exhibition expand this question from different perspectives. Some focus on the state of the book before it is written, others on what remains after it has been read, while others address the processes of production, circulation and representation. This multi layered approach detaches the meaning of the book from its content and considers it instead as a structure, a process and an experience.

Left: Yağız Özgen, untitled (master pages), Assemblage on canvas, Diptych: Each 174 × 136 × 4 cm, 2025

Right: Emirkan Cörüt, Konfeti, Video, 58’56’’, 2025

Yağız Özgen’s work titled İsimsiz (master pages) renders visible the order a book possesses before encountering a single word. The typesetting templates and blank pages remind us that the meaning of a book is shaped by structural decisions that precede the text itself. Here, the müellif of the book is not a person, but page proportions, voids and systems. In Emirkan Cörüt’s video Konfeti, by contrast, the book’s process of completion is traced through the trimming of its three edges. The book’s final form emerges not as an aesthetic choice, but as the outcome of a necessity imposed by machines and industrial standards. Authority is withdrawn from the writer or the designer and transferred to the production line.

Left: Alparslan Baloğlu, 16 Günlük Karbon Ayak İzim, Single edition book, Activated carbon powder, Book cloth fixed with activated carbon powder, Two sheets laminated together, 2 × 120 g first grade paper, 2.5 mm grey cardboard, Adler typewriter, Carbon copy paper for typewriter, 90 g first grade paper, Windsor & Newton fixative, Talens fixative, Two pairs of socks, Three pairs of shoes, My bare feet, size 45, 2025

Right: Caner Yılmaz, a i k p t, Ink on paper, handmade book, Single edition, 11.7 × 17.7 cm, 2025

The bodily and environmental dimensions of this production process become evident in Alparslan Baloğlu’s work 16 Günlük Karbon Ayak İzim. Here, the book turns into an object associated not so much with the transmission of thought as with the energy consumed, the labour expended and the traces left behind. Narrative gives way to record and measurement.

Left: Daniel Eatock, Sergi Kataloğu 3, Book, 28 pages, 18 × 24 cm, 12 editions, 2025

Rightda: Gül Yavuz, Birim, 140 edition books, White file paper, carbonless copy paper, water-based paint, 42 × 59.2 × 90 cm, 2025

Some works consider the book by directly equating it with space. Daniel Eatock’s work titled Sergi Kataloğu 3 aligns the corners of book pages with the corners of the gallery. As one moves through the two storey exhibition space, fragments of the book appear at unexpected corners, intersecting our path. The book thus ceases to function as a tool representing the exhibition and instead acquires a presence equivalent to the exhibition itself. This correspondence suggests that the book can operate as an extension of the exhibition. Gül Yavuz’s work Birim, in turn, approaches the relationship between the book and space through measurement, scale and repetition. The book becomes less a surface to be read than a body that occupies space and draws boundaries. Monica Papi’s work Cild Olıcak Mushaf considers the book by separating its components rather than assembling them. The pages, cover and binding are displayed in their pre assembled states, before forming a whole. The elements we encounter remind us how much labour is required to produce the book as a physical object. Even though contemporary printing technologies can prepare a book through rapid processes, binding remains a time consuming step that cannot be sustained without maintaining the culture and experience behind it. In Saliha Yavuz’s work, by contrast, the book is entirely withdrawn. What remains are only emptiness, order and trace. This absence demonstrates that the forms of power constructed around the book persist even without its material presence.

Left: Monica Papi, Cild Olıcak Mushaf, [Mesud b. Ahmed, Süheyl ü Nevbahar terc., 1354], [1] Cut calf leather, [2] Vegetable tanned leather, coloured pulp paper, raw cotton fabric, vegetable dyed binding tape, [3] Lamb leather, vegetable dyed cotton fabric, goat leather, thread sewn pulp paper, [4] Dyed lamb leather, [5] Three pieces of lamb leather, 2025

Right: Saliha Yavuz, Kitaplık, Site specific installation, Bookshelf, various personal objects, 150 × 150 cm, 2025

Amir Jamshidi’s work, produced in the context of Palestine, approaches the book not merely as an aesthetic or formal object, but as a tool of memory, testimony and resistance. Here, even though the book is stripped of its content in the conventional sense, it nevertheless carries a historical weight and a political responsibility. Considered together, the works in Book as Work do not fix the book within a single definition, nor do they seek to glorify it, but rather hold it in suspension. The exhibition attends to the book through the order that precedes its writing, the processes to which it is subjected during production, the meanings it acquires when it is rendered unreadable and even the traces it leaves behind when it disappears altogether.

Left: Amir Jamshidi, Filistin Nasıl Yazılır?, Laser cut on transparent acrylic sheet, 20 × 30 × 2 cm, 2025

Right: Sarah Belle Reid, Eğrelti Benzetisi, Four channel sound installation, 39’18’’, 2025

An event held in Hayy’s exhibition space on 13 December, with the participation of Süreyyya Evren, extends this discussion through a lived example. Evren’s description of the gathering as a “talk performance,” and the opening of this designation to negotiation with the audience, suggests that what determines the nature of an action is not so much its content as its context. The status of a talk is shaped by the framework that names it. This question can be directed not only at the book itself, but also at the institutions that surround it. Libraries stand as symbols of universal access to books. Yet when the same book is taken from a library and transferred to an institutional archive, labelled as a “printed work” and assigned an inventory number, its status changes. What is expected of it is no longer to be read, but to be preserved. What proves decisive here is not the content of the book, but where it is located, by whom it is classified and within which context it is presented. Book as Work separates the book not only from its content, but also from the networks of authority through which it is defined.