During the 21st edition of Contemporary Istanbul, a collaboration with Ertuğrul Güngör and Faruk Ertekin connects Turkish and Venetian craftsmanship through performance, bespoke creations and the act of making.
In partnership with Golden Goose
At Golden Goose HAUS Istanbul, the life of an artwork will continue beyond the moment of its completion. During Contemporary Istanbul 2026, Turkish artists Ertuğrul Güngör and Faruk Ertekin will create a painting that becomes part of a series of bespoke pieces. Visitors will be able to leave with a fragment of the work, carrying a shared encounter into something personal.
Taking place from 23 to 27 September within the fair’s official programme, the opening celebrations bring contemporary art and Turkish and Venetian craftsmanship to the Tersane district. The setting gives that exchange a physical presence. Across HAUS Istanbul’s 1,200 square metres, weathered wood and expansive drapery draw on the language of shipbuilding and travel. The connection between Venice and Istanbul runs through the space, with materials and working processes making the relationship between the two cities tangible.
Begüm Güney has shaped the space’s cultural identity through a selection of contemporary artworks integrated throughout HAUS. Her curatorial approach brings art into the places where people browse, gather and spend time, allowing encounters with individual works to become part of a visit. Güney also curates the live performance that will open the September programme, extending her work within the space into an occasion for artists and audiences to meet.
The celebrations began privately on 23 September, when Güngör and Ertekin, represented by Anna Laudel, unveiled and completed an artwork made for the occasion. The duo grew up together in Kütahya, and their ceramic practice draws on the city’s cultural memory, bringing inherited forms and imagery into contact with contemporary visual culture. That interest in how traditions are reinterpreted finds a new material expression here: for this project, they are working with leather as a canvas for the first time.
Venetian iconography and Anatolian motifs appear together in the composition, accented with gold. Fragments of painted leather will subsequently become part of bespoke Golden Goose sneakers, clothing and accessories. The transformation invites a closer look at the relationship between making and wearing, and at what happens to an image when it changes scale and context. Each piece will retain a connection to the larger work and to the moment in which it was made.
From 24 to 27 September, HAUS will become an experiential gallery, with a further selection of works by Güngör and Ertekin from the Anna Laudel collection, curated by Begüm Güney. Seeing those works alongside the collaboration offers visitors a chance to follow the artists’ thinking across different forms. The bespoke pieces will be available exclusively during Contemporary Istanbul, extending the exhibition through objects that can become part of everyday life.
The programme also introduces Golden Goose’s new Arts & Crafts masterclasses and workshops in the city. These sessions offer another way to engage, inviting visitors to participate in making. Alongside the artists’ live intervention, they place creative process at the heart of the celebrations: the time spent with materials, the decisions made by hand, and the pleasure of discovering what an object might become.
Elsewhere in HAUS, open workstations make tools and techniques visible. A Repair Hub gives worn sneakers another life, while a dedicated Bespoke area offers tailoring. Here, the relationship with an object continues through the work of alteration and repair, with every adjustment responding to the person who wears it.
In the midst of the fair, that invitation to spend time with a process has its own appeal. There is room to look, to make, and to trace the connections between an artist’s practice and an object chosen for oneself. A painting completed in company becomes something that accompanies an individual. Its story continues with whoever carries it away.
Golden Goose’s new Arts & Crafts workshops are now open for registration here.