Serap Tok: 'And the Days Began to Walk'
Collaboration, Curation
2022
Serap Tok’s inaugural solo exhibition, And the Days Began to Walk, derives its title from the Turkish translation of Eduardo Galeano’s Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History. Presented at İzmir’s KARANTİNA Art Space from January 22 to February 11, 2022, the exhibition marked the artist’s first major presentation, organized in collaboration with A Room of One’s Own (KABO). Spanning paintings, installations, and new works created during the pandemic, the show wove together selections from Serap Tok’s Dreams, Invisible Cities, and Dust series, offering a layered exploration of urban rhythm and introspection.
Central to the exhibition was an examination of the relationship between routine and revelation. Serap Tok’s works, characterized by fragmented cityscapes and abstracted pathways, traced the psychological imprints of daily walks and repetitive routes. The pandemic-era pieces introduced a quieter, more interior dimension, juxtaposing the stillness of isolation with the persistent pulse of urban life. This duality resonated with Galeano’s literary framework, which merges historical reflection with poetic observation, anchoring human experience within the passage of time.
The accompanying catalogue featured critical essays by artist and educator Murat Özdemir and Serap Tok, alongside a curatorial text titled Curator’s Last Note. Together, these contributions contextualized the exhibition’s thematic threads, emphasizing the interplay between personal narrative and collective memory. Staged at KARANTİNA, a venue tied to İzmir’s contemporary cultural dialogues, the presentation bridged localized artistic practices with universal themes of temporality and belonging. By integrating literary reference with visual experimentation, And the Days Began to Walk positioned itself as a meditation on how cities—and the selves within them—are continuously reshaped by unseen rhythms.
