iIstanbul Museum of Painting and SculptureTophane
Solo show of Neş'e Erdok's recent figurative works from more than fifty years of practice, her first personal exhibition at the museum.
You walk past a Palestinian mother holding her child, then people with empty bowls waiting in a soup line, then boys stopping to stroke cats on top of the rubble. Neş'e Erdok, now 86, painted these scenes of Gaza over three years, most of them in 2026, from what she followed in the papers and on television.
This is recent work, not a retrospective, and it is her first solo show at the museum of the academy where she trained and later became the first woman to hold a studio. Erdok told Türkiye Gazetesi she has no grand aim to record history: "Mine is a human reflex." The university's rector praised the work's documentary character.
Adults pay 200 TL and non-Turkish citizens 550 TL. Under-18s are free, and students get in free on Tuesdays from 16:00 to 20:00, the late opening. It runs until 31 December.
The mother and child
Look for a Palestinian mother wrapping her arms around her child.
The soup line
Exhausted people stand in a queue for soup, holding out empty containers.
Boys with cats in the rubble
Boys pause on top of collapsed buildings to stroke cats.
Children by the tents
Children stand in front of the tents their families now live in.
Men carrying their belongings
Men walk with bundles on their backs, carrying what they could take with them.
You want a break from the news: these are paintings of Gaza's war, mostly made in 2026.
Under-18s get in free. The paintings show the war in Gaza through displaced families and children, so prepare younger kids for the subject.