As part of Maçka Sanat Galerisi’s Traditional New Year Gathering project, which brings architecture and art together, the exhibition “together” for 50 years, specially prepared to mark the gallery’s 50th anniversary, meets the audience through a collaborative installation by architectsEce Gökmenoğlu and M. Onur Durna.

Since its opening in 1976, Maçka Sanat Galerisi has, over the course of fifty years, not only been a pioneering gallery in the field of art, but has also evolved into a lasting meeting place through the bonds formed and the shared thoughts among architects, artists, and audiences.

“The installation we designed for this exhibition draws inspiration from the collective nature of New Year rituals and the state of being together. Influenced by the space designed byMehmet Konuralp using 10 × 10 cm tiles, the work places a New Year tree at its center. While celebrating the gallery’s 50th anniversary, this tree invites everyone to share their New Year wishes together and to collectively build the tree. Throughout the exhibition, the tree grows and transforms through audience participation, taking on a new form with each contribution. At the end of the exhibition, we dismantle the tree together; each module that forms the tree is gifted to those who took part in the exhibition and this shared experience, allowing it to disperse into different spaces. In this way, the elements of the installation continue to live on after the exhibition, becoming part of new stories. We invite everyone to share their New Year wishes and to become a part of this tree.” In this project, Ece Gökmenoğlu and M. Onur Durna are accompanied by Enes Vatansever and Loubna Belkaid as part of the team. Throughout the exhibition, the installation grows with the contributions of viewers’  New Year wishes; at the end of the exhibition, it is dismantled into pieces and given as gifts to those who took part in this shared experience.