BETWEEN AIR & WATER series – Up in the Air #2

Quilted and Embroidered Comforter by Mathilde Melek An

Location: Büyük Valide Han

September 14th – 28th

daily – 1:00 pm – 7:00 pm

Mathilde Melek An’s work navigates the thresholds between memory, identity, and place. Drawing from her Franco-Turkish heritage and her life between Normandy and Istanbul, she creates installations and performances that dwell in liminal spaces — sites of transition where cultural narratives, personal histories, and collective imaginaries converge.

In VEDUTA_E, Mathilde Melek An reimagines traditional Turkish yorgan (quilts/comforter) by combining artisanal craft with contemporary digital printing techniques.

Yorgan is a traditional Turkish quilt with deep roots in Anatolian cultural heritage, embodying centuries of craftsmanship and storytelling through vibrant patterns and motifs.

A veduta (plural: vedute) is a highly detailed and immersive painting or print, originating from Italy, that portrays cityscapes or other expansive views, emphasizing perspective, light, and shadow. These vedute historically served as both artistic expressions and historical documents, offering viewers a coherent visual experience of a place.

The textile pieces in the VEDUTA/E project are made from sampled images and sewn into soft, down-filled comforters. These works function not only as tactile objects, but as portals — windows opening onto an iconographic world. Plush and dreamlike, they invite touch with the eyes, embodying a tension between softness and surface, craftsmanship and technology.

Her ongoing series Between Air & Water extends this exploration into states of in-betweenness. Quilted comforters stitched from aerial photographs of clouds, seas, swimming pools, and bathtubs present universal yet dislocated vistas: images that resist geographical anchoring.

By weaving together artisanal traditions, digital imagery, and performative gestures, Mathilde Melek An reflects on how objects carry memory and identity across time and space. The quilt — once a locus of intimate storytelling and intergenerational craft — becomes in her hands both archive and landscape: a site where personal and cultural histories are held, unfolded, and reimagined.

The artist invites the audience to experience art as a space of mobility and transformation — where cultural heritage, collective memory, and personal reflection intertwine.