About the Exhibition
Mahrokh Fouladian’s solo painting exhibition “THE OTHER”, on view at Himmet Öcal Khan Art Gallery from 16 September to 24 October 2026.
Mahrokh Fouladian’s “THE OTHER” invites viewers to reconsider the self and our relationships with others through forms, traces, encounters and silences.
Opening reception: 16 September 2026, 5:30–6:30 PM.
Exhibition dates: 16 September–24 October 2026.
Venue: Himmet Öcal Khan Art Gallery, Best Western Plus Khan Hotel, Kazım Özalp Cad. No. 10, Muratpaşa, Antalya, Türkiye.
EXHIBITION MANIFESTO
THE OTHER
Whichever word you use, there is always a distance within it.
There is one side.
And another side outside it.
Perhaps this is exactly where “the other” begins.
Where the place we occupy comes to an end.
Sartre sees the other as a judge who judges us within their own mind.
Levinas, by contrast, considers the other not an object to be exploited, but an absolute value to be protected.
For Hegel, human identity is not an individual, isolated matter. “Self-consciousness” emerges only when recognised by another “consciousness”. Put more simply, we need the other in order to know ourselves.
The other as a mirror and a condition of self-consciousness.
Friedrich Nietzsche, in contrast, takes an individualistic and radical view. For him, “the other”, appearing in the form of traditions, religion, society or the majority (which he calls “the herd”), is the greatest threat to the exceptional individual’s originality and independence. Through its own moral labels (good and evil), society tries to control the individual and make them resemble others.
The other is seen as a threat, a herd, or an obstacle to growth.
What is interesting is that even among these thinkers there is an “other”.
This means that the other is not only someone standing before us.
Everything has another side.
Like the two sides of the same city…
Like the night that follows the day, and the stars within that night whose light reaches us millions of years later.
There are things we look at but cannot touch.
Things we see, yet cannot truly see…
Sometimes even something right before our eyes becomes the other to us.
Because people can lose not only what is distant, but also what is close.
Someone to whom we have devoted years of care may, one day, become the other with a single sentence.
A house, a street, a city, a life to which we once belonged…
One day, it may seem as though it no longer belongs to us.
Some others have never even existed.
A life never lived.
A word never spoken.
A place never visited.
A person never encountered.
Yet somehow they continue to exist.
Because sometimes things that do not exist outlive those that do.
Perhaps a person’s entire life consists of moving back and forth between the self and the other.
As we draw closer to ourselves, we move away from someone else.
As we draw closer to someone else, we move away from ourselves, until we finally realise that what we call the other may not be as far from us as we thought.
The other is now a name.
The name of this exhibition.
But not only of this exhibition; it is also the name of feelings, encounters, separations, what we remember and what we forget.
Every form, every trace, every silence here is an attempt to look at the other side of something. Perhaps a person, perhaps an object, perhaps a moment in time, perhaps ourselves… Because sometimes, even when looking in the mirror, we may fail to encounter ourselves.
Perhaps I, too, am the other to someone. Perhaps you are as well. Who knows?
Perhaps all of us have already become the other in someone else’s story.
Perhaps “the other” is the face we cannot see in the mirror.
WELCOME
I HOPE MY PAINTINGS HAVE SUCCEEDED IN TELLING THEIR OWN STORIES.
THEY ARE NOW ON JOURNEYS OF THEIR OWN.
THANK YOU ALL FOR BEING HERE.
MAHROKH FOULADIAN
