Tracing Site-Specificity: A Transnational Critique

Date

2025-9-30

Author

Şahin, Emine İnci

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The aim of this study is to redefine the relationship between art and architecture, focusing on their in-between. Site-specificity is introduced as a critical spatial strategy that extends beyond definitions of art, medium, practice, site, space, and architecture. Therefore, it becomes an investigative tool that can magnify the site-art relationship, which would help to analyze shifts, transformations, and mutations of terms, practices, and spaces. The aim is to look into the terms and conditions of critical spatial practice in the expanded field that site-specificity defines, while creating a rich dialogue with existence of contemporary art spaces. The study approaches the history of site-specific art and contemporary art spaces transnationally, shifting the focus from isolated national narratives to practices and spaces that operate within complex layered networks, circulations of art, artists, curators, exhibitions, and architecture. Bridging art history and architecture on this transnational basis, the thesis examines exhibitions such as Gar (1995), Anı/Bellek (1991, 1993), İstanbul Yaya Sergisi (2002), and the 4th İstanbul Biennial (1995), combining archival analysis, oral history studies, and visual analysis. By tracing the transformations of art and space in the Turkish context, the study aims to fill a critical gap in scholarship and contribute a new perspective to global discussions on the spatiality of contemporary art vis-à-vis the concepts of liminality, sedentariness, mobility, and place-making.

Subject Keywords

site-specificity, critical spatial practice, expanded field, display spaces, museums

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/116103

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis