When Berlinde De Bruyckere came to Istanbul three years ago, she was looking for a subject to create new works for her solo show at Arter – Space for Art. Finally, she found a book by a surgeon who photographed women he had operated on at the end of the 1800s. The women had had cervical cancer, and the surgeon had removed their ovaries.
The women in the photographs are dressed with only their stomachs exposed to show their surgical scars. “I found the book in a personal library in Istanbul, and when I saw the photos I decided to focus my works on this subject,” she said.
So De Bruyckere, a Belgian artist, decided that her starting point should be the women and their wounds. Her current exhibition at Arter, called “The Wound,” opens today and will continue until Aug. 26, revealing her new works, as well as some of her famous sculptures. The new works include “-009-, 2011-2012” and a new series also titled “The Wound.”
