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Gülşah Ayla Bayrak

@ayla.tiff

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Artist | researcher | educator
Based in BE/TR

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Thank you for joining us for the opening of “Europe Knows Nothing About the Orient.”
It was wonderful to spend the evening together, share conversations, and experience the exhibition with you.

Curated by Hale Albayrak, “Europe Knows Nothing About the Orient” explores Gülşah Ayla Bayrak’s artistic practice through questions of representation. Rather than seeking an authentic image of the “Orient,” the exhibition challenges fixed definitions of culture and invites more open, fluid ways of seeing.

11–19 July 2026

Opening Hours
Saturday–Sunday, 10:00–18:00

The Building / Genk
Hoogstraat 2
3600 Genk, Belgium taken in The Building Genk by @ayla.tiff

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11 days ago

Surrounded by… taken in The Building Genk by @ayla.tiff

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21 days ago

Borrowing its title from an 1872 essay by Namık Kemal, the Ottoman intellectual who challenged European misconceptions about the “East” during a period of sweeping reform, and from Zeynep Çelik’s book of the same title, “Europe Knows Nothing About the Orient” frames Gülşah Ayla Bayrak’s practice through a critique of representation.

Moving between photography, installation, found objects, and performative gestures, Bayrak treats photography less as a documentary medium than as a material that slips between evidence and fiction. Objects gathered from Turkey, Belgian flea markets, online second-hand platforms, and personal networks no longer affirm their origins; instead, they reveal the projections and misreadings accumulated through their circulation.

Rather than searching for an authentic image of the “Orient,” Bayrak questions whether such authenticity can exist at all. Her work suggests that culture is not a fixed essence to be represented but something continually negotiated through relationships.

In this sense, “Europe Knows Nothing About the Orient” argues that Europe’s failure to know the Orient lies less in ignorance than in its insistence on reducing it to stable definitions. By embracing ambiguity and transformation over certainty, Bayrak unsettles inherited ways of seeing.

Poster designed by @nura.mahow ✨

Opening
11 July 2026, 20:00

Exhibition
11.07 ⎯ 19.07.2026

Opening Hours
Sat–Sun, 10.00 ⎯ 18.00

The Building / Genk
Hoogstraat 2
3600 Genk, Belgium taken in The Building Genk by @ayla.tiff

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a month ago

Allah bacılardan razı olsun 🌷🤍💅 by @ayla.tiff

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a month ago

Gurbet Kuşları 🪶
A work I made in 4 months in Istanbul.
This piece and the process of creating it changed me deeply.

I don’t know where it is now.
But maybe that’s exactly why it lives up to its name.

“Gurbet Kuşları” — birds of exile.
Like so many who leave, it has taken flight,
existing somewhere beyond my hands, beyond my knowing.

I think about it often.
Not with sadness, but with a quiet understanding:
some works are meant to travel,
to carry a piece of us into the world,
even when we no longer know where they rest.

🤳🏼 @esraozzd taken in Istanbul Türkiye by @ayla.tiff

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10 months ago

The day I arrived, the wind took my hand,
whispering secrets through the trees.
The mountains stood still, watching,
waiting for me to understand their silence.

I walked where ink flows like rivers,
where shamans call to the unseen,
where dervishes spin in surrender—
and I, too, became the turning sky.

Seoul wrapped me in its colors—
the red fire of kimchi,
the silver breath of Euljiro’s metal,
the golden hum of lights that never sleep.

Sinchon’s cats traced my steps,
silent messengers in the night.
And on the path behind my house,
a man walked—his presence, a quiet prayer in my heart.

I came with the wind, and the wind will take me again.
As my residency has come to an end I am leaving behind an incredible year filled with friends I can call home, books that changed me and memories that will last forever 🌷🫶🏻 taken in Korea National University of Arts by @ayla.tiff

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a year ago

Gülşah Ayla Bayrak
The Start of Something

Hoe breng je de ervaring van Oriëntalisme over via beelden? En hoe wordt het vertegenwoordigd in ons dagelijks leven?

Kom op 4 februari van 13.00 tot 15.00 uur naar de feestelijke opening van de tentoonstelling in MAQAM in Amsterdam-West.

@foam_amsterdam
@maqam.amsterdam taken in Amsterdam, Netherlands by @ayla.tiff

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3 years ago

🥀🧊🥛Opgroeien ❤️‍🔥🧿📹 taken in Karadeniz by @ayla.tiff

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4 years ago

Behind the scenes 🧿🗣🧊 by @ayla.tiff

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4 years ago

Ergens tussen het westen en het Oosten 🧿❤️‍🔥🥀
@vicebelgie @vicebelgique
✍️ @nadiakara

https://www.vice.com/nl/article/v7vdey/gulsah-bayrak-fomu-tiff taken in Türkiye by @ayla.tiff

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4 years ago

Everything feels so empty so useless without you by @ayla.tiff

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4 years ago

I must say I feel embarrassed to address my pain,
For not being able to do anything but watch.
I couldn't meet your eyes; I hope you can understand. The room we both left our happiness in,
still lives in my head. Perhaps we had to go through this pain to grow into something big, but did you have to leave me within this process.
We could not even say we loved each other in the end, but I hope you could feel it in how I tried to care for you in those years. I would have crushed everything to hear you say my name. You were my mountain who showed me the top of the world, yet you are here underneath my feet. The fact that we were playing this game, we knew we were losing,
The unrealistic dreams and hopes we were building upon the day's statistics leave this great despair I can't surpass. No words can express how much I love you; maybe this pain that will live in me forever will prove how much I will continue to love you. I hope to be in your warm embrace and heal those years together in the future.
But for now, rest until we meet again.
I love you baba 💙 by @ayla.tiff

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4 years ago