Mahalla Festival 2025: Reimagining the Midas Dilemma in Büyük Valide Han

From September 13 to 28, 2025, the Mahalla Festival transformed Büyük Valide Han in Istanbul into a living conversation between history, craftsmanship, and contemporary art. This year’s edition explored “The Re-Narration of the Midas Dilemma”—a meditation on value, transformation, and the cost of unchecked growth.

The Han—built in 1651 by Kösem Sultan—embodies the essence of mahalla, the Arabic word for neighborhood or place. For centuries, this vast caravanserai has offered shelter to merchants, artisans, and dreamers. Today, it remains a vibrant labyrinth of workshops and stories, its walls echoing with the hum of creation.

Why Büyük Valide Han?

Mahalla has always sought spaces where history remains alive, where the past and present overlap through daily use.

Inside the Han, the festival team discovered a unique social and administrative structure—a living organism of coordinators, designers, and artisans, all working side by side.

“The Han has changed many times, but what’s constant is how people reinvent it,” says Mert, a product designer working there – MODeditions.

“It’s not just a workshop—it’s a dialogue with history.”

Once a refuge for women and later a storage and trade center, Büyük Valide Han now stands as a quiet rebellion against global homogenization. Within its walls, craftsmanship thrives at a human pace—where skill, patience, and conversation replace industrial speed.

The Midas Touch: Reflections on Value

This year’s theme, The Midas Dilemma, questioned how society defines worth—what we preserve, what we consume, and what we sacrifice in the pursuit of progress.

Mert Onur, a product designer working at the site, noted that the structure was originally built by Kösem Sultan as a refuge for widows and unmarried women. Over time, the vaulted building evolved into a space for both storage and habitation, nurturing a strong sense of community. Following the departure of minority communities from Turkey nearly eighty years ago, the Han underwent a gradual transformation toward greater functionality. Large corridors were subdivided, and small workshops were carved out—changes that reshaped the building’s original form and use.

In this context, Büyük Valide Han became more than a venue; it became a metaphor. The Han resists commodification, maintaining a model of diverse, slow, meaningful production that honors both material and maker.

Today, individuals like Mert who have chosen to base their workshops here have done so deliberately, inspired by the atmosphere of the Han and aware of the cultural value of maintaining a presence within such a historic site.

Magic Carpet Collaborations

In cooperation with the Magic Carpet platform, two international artists—Tbel Abuseridze (Georgia) and Ieva Kotryna Ski (Lithuania/France)—brought new perspectives to the Han through residencies that bridged craft and contemporary art. Industrial designer Mert Onur played an integral role in the process.

Tbel Abuseridze: Capturing the Invisible

Using the antique cyanotype process, Tbel imprinted fragments of daily life inside the Han onto fragile ceramic surfaces. One piece, however, extended beyond the Han’s walls—a haunting blue image of the new Kanal Istanbul bridge.

“Tbel’s work makes this invisible reality visible,” Mert explains.

“It’s just hours away, yet few have ever seen it. Through his lens, we suddenly do.”

Mert Onur and his partner, Serhat Erol, created copper bases for Tbel’s works, merging metalcraft with modern photography. The result: a luminous dialogue between tradition and transformation, beauty and unease.

Ieva Kotryna Ski: Measuring Time with Coffee Spoons

Ieva’s project drew from Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s The Time Regulation Institute, where an efendi measures time using coffee spoons. Together with Mert, she forged a distorted spoon, symbolizing how modern life bends and reshapes our perception of time.

Her installation included a pink-toned video filmed with a broken smartphone camera—showing the Bosphorus from a foreign woman’s gaze, fragile yet resolute.

“Ieva’s idea was such an intelligent reference to the Han”, which has layers of history within its tiles.

Mert recalls. “It triggered so many ideas that I can hardly describe them all.”

Both artists offered the craftsmen new ways to see their space: as a site of creation that’s both ancient and urgently modern.

Craftsmen’s Reflections: A Living Collaboration

The festival wouldn’t have been possible without the artisans of the Han, who became co-authors of the artworks. Each contributed skills—from metalwork to logistics—and, in doing so, rediscovered the artistry within their own practice.

“I think the artists made us feel the art we made,” says Batuhan, one of the participating craftsmen.

For many, the festival also reignited conversations about the Han’s future. Following recent earthquakes, parts of the building face serious structural challenges. Mert and others have pledged to care for it if no one else will.“The next Mahalla,” he proposes, “should focus on the Han itself—its preservation and survival.”

For Serhat Erol, who worked as a festival technician, Mahalla served another role:

“It was an advertisement for our shops. People could finally see what we do and who we are.”

The craftsmen now hope to be involved earlier in the festival’s next edition—from concept to execution—turning Mahalla into a true collaboration between art, heritage, and community.

A Neighborhood of Stories

The Mahalla Festival 2025 reaffirmed that art’s most transformative power lies in collaboration and place.

By inhabiting Büyük Valide Han, the festival didn’t merely showcase artworks—it reactivated a community, allowing stories, skills, and ideas to flow between generations and geographies.

Through the eyes of artists like Tbel and Ieva and the hands of Mert, Batuhan, and Serhat, the Han once again became what it has always been:
a neighborhood of stories, echoing with the timeless rhythm of creation.