Forty works of art by visual journalist Fevzi Yazıcı, created mostly in prison as he has been behind bars since August 2016 on terrorism and coup charges, will go on display at an art gallery in New York on Jan. 30, the tr724 news website reported.
The news of the exhibition, which will take place at the Yeh Art Gallery, was also announced by Greg Manifold, the design director for The Washington Post.
“Next week, imprisoned Turkish journalist Fevzi Yazıcı has an art show opening at St. John’s Univ. The collection is powerful and includes pieces drawn from the dim light in solitary confinement at Silivri Prison,” Manifold tweeted.
The exhibition, titled “Dark White,” will run until March 14.
Yazıcı, who used to work for the now-closed Zaman daily, stood trial on terrorism and coup charges due to the paper’s affiliation with the Gülen movement, accused by the Turkish government of masterminding a failed coup in July 2016. The movement strongly denies any involvement in the failed coup.
Along with five other journalists, he was given an aggravated life sentence in February 2018 on charges of attempting to overturn the constitutional order.
At the end of a retrial in November 2019 after the Supreme Court of Appeals reversed the verdicts given the six journalists by a lower court, Yazıcı was sentenced to 11 years, three months in prison on charges of membership in a terrorist organization.
The exhibition surveys 40 works on paper by Yazıcı, including drawings, typographies and notes produced before and during his current incarceration in İstanbul.
A member of the Society for News Design, Yazıcı has earned more than 100 awards for his newspaper layouts and designs since 2003.
Parallel to his lauded visual journalism, Yazıcı has nurtured an extensive drawing practice over the past two decades. Yazıcı’s whimsical, yet puzzling drawings often imagine dream-like spaces and worlds with attenuated, wriggling figures and address themes related to transformation, emancipation and psychological states, according to information on the website of the Yeh Art Gallery.