Benim Güzel Hatalarım (My Beautiful Mistakes) at x-ist, open throughout the summer, brings together works by Esin Keskinoğlu, Pamir Yıldıran, and Sefa Karakuş. The exhibition explores “error” not as a flaw but as a creative potential. While the summer art calendar largely shifts to the southern coast, Istanbul continues to host notable exhibitions, with My Beautiful Mistakes standing out as a highlight.
The exhibition’s central theme, “error,” is approached from unconventional angles. Cracks, distortions, absences, and chance occurrences in the works of all three artists open pathways to aesthetic transformation. In conversations with each artist, they elaborate on how the concept of error informs their individual practices and the works presented.
Esin Keskinoğlu: “Inviting Women to Make Mistakes”
For Keskinoğlu, error is inseparable from the creative process. Working primarily with clay—a material inherently fragile—she experiences inevitable “mistakes” during creation, such as deformations in clay or cracks in fired porcelain. These physical imperfections educate and transform her practice, making the exhibition a reflection on the impossibility of perfection in life and the aesthetic and ethical value of mistakes.
Keskinoğlu highlights the collaborative dimension of the exhibition: working alongside other artists under the same thematic umbrella allowed her to observe diverse interpretations of error, enriching her own approach. Her works transform cracks and fractures into metaphors for courage, defying societal and artistic expectations and promoting acceptance of imperfection. The fragility of materials such as glass, clay, and porcelain functions as a feminist gesture, challenging the cultural demand for women to remain flawless and inviting them to embrace error.
Pamir Yıldıran: “A Gap for Rewriting Space and Memory”
For Yıldıran, error serves as a creative entry point for reinterpreting space and memory. Deliberately skewed perspectives and playful pastels conceal a scene nourished by imperfection. By stretching and twisting familiar domestic and queer spaces, he reconstructs trauma into playful yet disquieting illusions, where skeletal figures and sharp architectural distortions disrupt initial perceptions. Error becomes a vehicle for honesty, merging personal history with collective memory while inviting the audience to engage with the tension between delight and unease.
Participating alongside artists from different disciplines allowed Yıldıran to consider error beyond individual boundaries, recognizing its potential as a shared, multilayered creative language. His pastel worlds conceal queer narratives and fragmented memories, illustrating how aesthetic distortions can reflect societal pressures on identity and memory.
Sefa Karakuş: “Error as a Starting Point, Not an End”
Karakuş views error as a catalyst for transformation rather than a deficiency. Broken or incomplete surfaces become central to her compositional practice, allowing accidental or random occurrences to guide creative decisions. For her, error fosters problem-solving, challenges established structures, and transforms the unexpected into meaningful narrative elements. The exhibition encourages viewers to navigate inconsistencies and discontinuities, fostering a participatory experience in which the audience completes or interprets the open-ended works.
Exhibition Details
Benim Güzel Hatalarım presents 27 works in total. Keskinoğlu contributes four pieces, Karakuş seven, and Yıldıran sixteen, most created specifically for this exhibition. Together, the artists offer distinct and individual approaches to the theme of error, emphasizing its creative, transformative, and participatory potential.
This exhibition underscores error not as a limitation but as a source of innovation, aesthetic exploration, and social commentary—inviting both artists and viewers to reconsider the value of imperfection.
