
Review – Les murs de Burhan Doğançay – Bénédicte De Donker
The exhibition The Walls of Burhan Doğançay is organised by the MAH in collaboration with the Kunst Museum Winterthur. It is made possible by the generosity of Angela Doğançay, the artist’s widow, who, in 2018, made a significant gift of fifty-nine works of the artist to the MAH. The exhibition focuses on the series Walls of Israel which dates back to 1975 and the artist’s first trip to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Barely two years had passed since the Yom Kippour War (October 6–24, 1973) and the work reveals both the political context and the dominant mindset in the country at the time. This trip was the starting point of Doğançay’s major artistic, photographic, and archival endeavour, Walls of the World, which was his focus until the end of his life. This unique archive, consisting of over forty-thousand photographs from 114 countries, is presently housed at the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis. Based on this material and sketches, Doğançay built an oeuvre of works on paper and paintings that represent, reframe, rework, and reinterpret walls from the four corners of the world, all while revealing shared aspirations and a universal language.