Icons and imagination at Pera Palace

Welcome back to Al-Monitor Istanbul.

This issue is about love and lahmacun — the thin, crisp flatbread topped with finely minced, unapologetically spicy meat — which, like love, is best approached hot and without overthinking. We begin with a whimsical exhibition in the heart of Istanbul, wander through recent shows, including one where Venus, the goddess of love, collides with modern algorithms, and end by examining lahmacun in its dual career: first as a beloved street food, and second as an unexpectedly reliable economic index.

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Thanks for reading,

Nazlan (@NazlanEr on X)

P.S. Have tips on Istanbul’s culture scene? Send them my way at nertan@al-monitor.com.

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1. Leading the week: ‘Please do not disturb’

Ansen’s “No Vacancy” (photo courtesy of x-ist)

“Please Do Not Disturb,” the new group exhibition at x-ist, takes the Pera Palace, a hotel that has inspired novels, films and endless speculation — and one we often revisit in this newsletter — as a starting point from which to rethink the lives of iconic figures who might, or might not, have passed through its rooms.

The works resist direct portraiture, unfolding instead as original creations shaped by intellectual ruptures and aesthetic codes left behind in contemporary encounters where past and present meet without collapsing into biography.

The exhibition’s historical anchor emerges through Tayfun Gulnar’s double portrait, which places Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, in pensive conversation in “Room 101,” and his edgy second-in-command, Ismet Inonu, perched near the window in “

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