Curatorial Reading

Created for Hale Arpa’s major 2011 solo exhibition at Ark Kültür in Istanbul, “Plexiglass Boxes on Painted Plates” (2011) forms part of her celebrated philosophical installation “Nothing Happens – Nobody Is There”. Employing plexiglass boxes on painted wooden plates, Arpa arranges discarded wooden cobbler shoe lasts upon painted geometric pedestals, evoking the spectral footprints of countless anonymous travelers.

Accompanied by philosophical lectures from scholar Metin Bobaroğlu during the exhibition, the work probes the Zen and Sufi paradox of non-being and eternal presence. The empty shoe is not an absence, but an artifact of lived existence—a silent memorial celebrating the sacredness of everyday human passage through time.