Welcome to Al-Monitor Istanbul.

This week, we dive into the age of angst, tracing artistic responses to corroded legitimacy, institutional fatigue and the slow erosion of public trust. From a toppled Marianne at Arter to a red-painted figure in the forest, we spotlight artists who frame protest and persistence alongside data that confirms Turks are feeling the pressure.

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Nazlan (@NazlanEr on X)

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1. Leading the week: The age of angst

“Marianne” from Ugo Schiavi’s “Uprising” Series. (Photo by Kayhan Kaygusuz)

“Under Pressure, Above Water” at Arter offers a portrait of the present moment as a pressure chamber — an age where violence is ambient, authority unmoored, and justice increasingly out of reach. Curator Nilufer Sasmazer, who co-led the landmark 2017 retrospective of ceramicist Fureya, says that while assembling 33 works by 15 artists across media, she kept returning to one distinction: Fear may paralyze, but anguish proves deadlier in the end.

The sculptures, installations and photography move between two currents: the sediment of past and present wrongs, and the improvised strategies — intimate, ironic, defiant — that let us breathe.

Belgian painter Michael Borremans’ “Happy Missile” renders the instrument of destruction as a toy. Tunisian artist Nadia Kaabi-Linke’s “Smooth Criminal” turns a traditional Gulf fish trap into a delicate steel lattice woven with near-invisible Stars of David. The piece, titled after the Michael Jackson song, critiques the invisibility of political culpability. French artist Ugo........

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