Visit Foam tonight (21st March) to witness the openings of three new exhibitions: Canary by Japanese photographer Lieko Shiga, Foto Galatasaray by Turkish photographer Maryam Şahinyan and Everything In the Studio (Destroyed) by Sara Cwynar. These run from from 22nd March until 12th and 16th May.

Lieko Shiga combines local myths and stories of ordinary people with personal memories, feelings, and experiences. In this way, she creates fantastic and often dramatic images referring to the realm between dream and reality. Her dark work has a strong connection with the Japanese folkloric tradition of seeing the supernatural as self-evident. Shiga belongs to a new generation of Japanese photographers. Her photos are marked by extensive use of colour and light, and strong imagery based on fantasy. The exhibition consists of 50 works of the Canary series, next to the film with the same title. It runs until 12th May.

Foto Galatasaray is a selection of photos by studio photographer Maryam Şahinyan. With her wood view camera, she took portraits of minorities such as Christians, Armenian Turks, transvestites, and Turkish countryside families. Women posed with self confidence in her photo studio in the heart of Istanbul and the typical Istanbul cosmopolitan diversity is expressed in the photos. With her work, Şahinyan gave minorities a place in Turkey’s visual history. After closing her studio in 1985, her negatives were saved from destruction by publisher Yetvart Tomasyan. Artist, researcher, and curator Tayfun Serttaş then made the negatives accessible to the general public. The exhibition can be visited from 22nd March until 12th May.

Sara Cwynar is obsessed with collecting and ordening visual materials. Her photographic installations exist out of the compulsive need to preserve, own, and orden images. She brings Everything In the Studio (Destroyed) to Foam: Cwynar collected all the items in her studio, documented each item, made a digital map and then put everything in one corner of her exposition space. Soon, she realised that these items weren’t connected to her memory, so she decided to leave the project as it was. After a month, she destroyed every single item to make place for others and her pictures are the only proof of the items ever having existed. Sara Cwynar is born in Canada and now lives in New York. This exhibition in Foam is her first solo exhibition in Europe and can be visited from 22nd March until 16th May.

These three exhibitions open on 21st March at 17h30 and can be visited at Foam until 12th and 16th May.