DEMOLISHED QUARTERS - ISTANBUL II
Digital C-Prints, 6x(70x50 cm), 1x(70x80 cm) 2017

With the Demolished Quarters series, the artist develops and applies a methodology of visualizing information on metropolises. This method is based on an information-driven approach that translates shifts, fluctuations, destruction, reconstruction, restoration, and seeming renewal into the cartographic realm. Appropriating and using effectively cartography to make clearly visible and comprehensible what cities have lost, Vardarman highlights the specificity of these demolitions. In other words, he points to the where instead of the how, which helps viewers see and appreciate patterns around the changes in the city.

Demolished Quarters - Istanbul II (Districts) is idiosyncratic to the way in which the historic city of Istanbul has grown inorganically over the last two decades, based on shifting ideological and social paradigms. The city’s multiple centers and growing needs with influxes of immigrants escaping conflict, Vardarman’s visualization clearly distinguishes the encroaching boundaries of the city towards the sea. Tentacular in its formations, Istanbul’s demolition is charged with narratives of displacement and replacement as a modus operandi of the city. Vardarman focuses on the city of multitudes to produce an image based on information that suddenly clarifies all that gets lost on the streets of Istanbul: The incomprehensible becomes legible, linking the experiential with the times that we live in, now. This image is not only a photograph of the city as is, but also includes information of what it was and what it will and could be.