phD / Exhibition Narrative in the Expanded Field: Garanti Gallery Case

Completed in 2024 under the supervision of Prof. Kerem Özel at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, my doctoral dissertation, Exhibition Narrative in the Expanded Field: Garanti Gallery Case, investigates exhibition narrative as a spatial phenomenon. Drawing on architecture, exhibition studies, phenomenology, and narrative theory, the research proposes a diagrammatic model for examining the relationship between narrative, space, spatiality, and experience.

Extended Abstract: The Diagram of Exhibition Narrative in the Expanded Field

Inspired by Rosalind Krauss's seminal 1979 essay Sculpture in the Expanded Field, which employed the Klein diagram to map sculpture's relationship with adjacent disciplines, this doctoral research proposes a diagrammatic model titled Exhibition Narrative in the Expanded Field (ENEF) as a framework for examining the spatialization of narrative in exhibitions. Just as Krauss's model defines sculpture through its relationships to what it is not, the proposed diagram positions exhibition narrative within the expanded field generated by the interplay between content matrix (non-content) and spatiality (non-space).

The diagram establishes two intersecting axes: ways of relating to exhibition space and forms of spatiality associated with different levels of experience, ranging from visual perception to spatial experience. It approaches exhibition narrative both as an object to be mapped and as a mapping device capable of tracing the ambiguous spatialities produced through exhibition-making. Within this framework, story occupies the opposite pole of narrative as its non-narrative counterpart, representing the diagram's most fixed and stable condition. In contrast, narrative is understood as an open-ended, relational, and multi-layered construct whose identity becomes increasingly fluid as it moves towards the domain of spatiality and experience.

The diagram further investigates the relationship between space and spatiality through the transformative potential of scenography. As scenography enables existing space to be reconfigured into ambiguous spatialities, the research asks whether, as narrative becomes increasingly spatialized in exhibitions, existing space itself may begin to dematerialize, opening ambiguous spatialities. This question is articulated at the intersection located near point 10 on the 10–11 axis of the diagram, where spatiality and experientiality reach their maximum. Exhibitions that offer an intense experiential condition, in which the existing exhibition space becomes almost imperceptible, are positioned in this region.

Rather than functioning as a classificatory system or a hierarchy of exhibition types, the diagram operates as an analytical and speculative model. It proposes a field of relational possibilities through which different modes of exhibition-making can be examined, compared, and discussed, while also opening new discussions on the relationships between narrative, space, spatiality, and experience.

For further information about the research, please feel free to get in touch.