Telhan deepens his investigation of the Yenikapı/Langa district, one of Istanbul’s most contentious urban sites, where thousands of years of material history is hidden beneath layers of asphalt and gravel today. Comprising two alternative ‘museums’ for Langa/Yenikapı, his work points to the inherently colonial function of museums, challenging the anthropocentric bias with which stories of land are told from material remains. The Museum of Exhalation is a printed publication featuring interviews between the district’s artefacts and various specialists. The Museum of Digestion, meanwhile, takes the form of a public garden installation at Müze Gazhane, where different aspects of Langa are spatialised, re-contextualising the area’s non-human residents to be ‘digested’ within the visitors’ body – both literally and metabolically.

See the Museum of Digestion project website for more information.