A grand procession parades across the splayed-open pages of an accordion-fold book, with one robed and turbaned dignitary on horseback following after another, flanked by archers on foot. Flecked with gold and painted on vegetal dyed paper,
Suleyman the Magnificent is Going to Friday Prayer (2020) at first glance appears as if it could have been created by palace artisans during the reign of its namesake, the 16th-century Ottoman sultan – if not for a few small details.
A drone hovering overhead, a protester with a megaphone and a police riot-control vehicle also populate the work by Halil Altindere, a Turkish artist who is part of a new generation taking a centuries-old tradition and making it their own. A group exhibition at the Pera Museum in Istanbul, ‘Miniature 2.0: Miniature in Contemporary Art’, includes 40 such works by 14 artists from Azerbaijan, India, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. It highlights the wide-ranging permutations of subject matter, style and