Kerem Ozan Bayraktar (TR), Ahmet Rüstem Ekici & Hakan Sorar (TR), Ekmel Ertan (TR), Buşra Tunç (TR)
Exhibition duration: 6 February – 28 August 2026
Venue: Trenčín Castle (Gothic Chapel + basement / underground of the cannon bastion)
The Legend of the Well of Love is present at Trenčín Castle in the stones, in the silence of the courtyard, and in the stories people carry home with them. The exhibition Well of Love does not rewrite it with a “new plot” – rather, it opens it up as a space for perception: of echoes, layers of memory, labour, and myth that have settled into the castle over the centuries.
The exhibition is curated by Ekmel Ertan. Within the historic spaces, it presents four site-specific works by Turkish artists, working with sound, light, holography, and material. This is not an exhibition to be merely “looked at” – what matters is to move through it, to stay for a while, to listen, and to observe how the space changes together with you.
Spatial division of the exhibition within the castle
The exhibition is divided into two main parts – each with its own atmosphere and its own “mode of silence”.
1) Gothic Chapel
Ahmet Rüstem Ekici & Hakan Sorar – Palimpsest and The Whispers of the Well
Kerem Ozan Bayraktar – Beneath
2) Basement / underground of the cannon bastion
Ekmel Ertan – Echoes of Love
Buşra Tunç – Unspoken (interior version)
Works and artists
Ahmet Rüstem Ekici & Hakan Sorar – Palimpsest and The Whispers of the Well
The artist duo works with holography, digital interfaces, and contemporary technologies. In the context of the castle, the legend is transformed into a “rewritten manuscript” – a palimpsest in which old layers do not disappear, but are overlaid with new ones.
Kerem Ozan Bayraktar – Beneath
The installation connects AI animation with a physical system of circulating water. Beneath the surface – beneath the stone, beneath the story, beneath everyday movement – something is always happening. The work engages with what is hidden, yet present.
Ekmel Ertan – Echoes of Love
The curator of the exhibition also enters the project as an artist. In this work, he connects sound, space, and memory so that the “voice of the place” does not become decoration, but an experience: here, the echo is not an effect, but a trace.
Buşra Tunç – Unspoken (interior version)
The work reconstructs the voice and presence of Fatima through light and sound – as a stream of “unformed speech” that cannot be closed into a single sentence. It is a fragile, concentrated installation about what remains unspoken, yet shapes our stories.
Dramaturgy: Miran Bulut
Photographs and video recordings will be made at the event and may be published at a later date.
