Çocuk Olmanın Şarkısı
We took on the spatial design and installation of the exhibition from start to finish. From 27 March to 27 April 2026, the Fikret Otyam Art Centre in Ankara hosted “Çocuk Olmanın Şarkısı”, a wide-ranging exhibition inspired by Peter Handke's unforgettable poem "Song of Childhood".
The exhibition examined the bond an individual forms with their own past, treating ceramics as a vehicle of memory that is both material and poetic. Here clay was redefined along the axis of play, memory and transformation.
Offering participatory areas alongside video, installation and performance, the exhibition invited the visitor to be not merely an observer but an active part of this many-layered experience.
Fikret Otyam Art Centre
27 April 2026
CREDITS
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Held from 27 March to 27 April 2026 at the Fikret Otyam Art Centre in Ankara, the exhibition took its inspiration from Peter Handke's poem Song of Childhood. Where the poem's lines “When the child was a child…” point to the relationship an individual forms with the past, ceramics come forward as the material and poetic counterpart of that relationship.
The exhibition brought visitors a wide selection of work by contemporary ceramic artists, both existing pieces and works made specially for the show. Alongside ceramic forms, the selection made room for other media such as video, installation and performance, building a broad exhibition experience.
Within this scope, the exhibition has four main aims:
- to rebuild the ideas of childhood and play by relating them to clay,
- to make the transformation of ceramics — from raw state to fired form — visible both metaphorically and aesthetically,
- to design participatory areas that make the visitor part of the experience rather than only a viewer,
- to make visible the current directions in contemporary ceramic production in Turkey,
and together these aims shape the exhibition as a whole.
Clay here is not only a material but a vehicle of memory and a space for play. While the exhibition aims to set individual and collective memory in motion again, it invites the visitor to remember the play rituals of the past and to rebuild them through art.