The Occidentalist Imaginary of Istanbul Modern: A Case for Social Imaginaries in the Age of Global Contemporary

This article discusses the ways in which Occidentalism, as a dialogical making of Turkish modernity associated with a non-Western context, extends to the contemporary era as the social imaginary of the artistic field. The social imaginary, as defined by Charles Taylor, is the shared structure of meanings, and provides a basis for generating common practices while, at the same time, granting a sense of legitimacy for a group of people. In this respect, the article claims that Occidentalism, which ultimately refers to the boundary management of what is imagined as West and East, underlines the myth of the artistic social imaginary. The Occidentalist imaginary sanctions artists as the competent performers of the boundary management between the West and the East, past and present, local and global, with its shifting associations. As Taylor notes, the ways in which people imagine their social existence are carried in images, stories and legends. This article investigates the narratives of art museum exhibitions to grasp both factual and normative understandings. To understand the interplay between change and continuity in the Occidentalist imaginary, the article focuses on Istanbul Modern, the museum of modern and contemporary art in Istanbul founded in 2004. The analysis of narratives produced through exhibitions and the interpretation of the museum’s collections not only reveals the patterns and shifts in the ways of producing the Occidentalist imaginary, but also illustrates the logic that sustains its extension to the global contemporary era.