marie claire türkiye

Body, mind, soul: A modern purification experience at Zeyrek Çinili Hamam.

Report | May 26, 2026

The memory of history, water, and a mystical underworld comes alive in a multi-layered dialogue within the Byzantine cistern of the Zeyrek Tiled Bath. American artist Margaret R. Thompson's first solo exhibition in Turkey,  Temenos: The Inland Sea , invites visitors into an inner sanctuary guided by scents, sounds, and canvases.

Interviews with the two powerful figures behind this fascinating project open a door to the depths of the exhibition and the space. In the first part, Anlam de Coster, artistic director and curator of the Zeyrek Tiled Hamam, which has made this historical texture the backbone of the artistic program, explains the conceptual framework of the exhibition and its impact on Istanbul's contemporary art scene. Immediately following, artist Margaret R. Thompson details the primal visual language she discovered 6,000 miles from home and the time-stopping atmosphere of the cistern.

In this underground sea where time flows cyclically, it's a timeless realm of exploration focused on silencing the mind and listening to the soul…