Turkish-American artist Bilgé (Bilgé Civelekoğlu Friedlaender), a largely overlooked figure in American Minimalism, is the subject of a new institutional exhibition in New York titled “Torn Time: Bilgé” at the Institute for Arab and Islamic Art (IAIA). The show, curated by IAIA Founding Director Mohammed Rashid Al-Thanion and on view through October, highlights works from the two decades following her 1972 deep-sea dive in the Bahamas, which sparked a period of prodigious creation using delicate paper interventions. Bilgé studied at the Istanbul Academy of Fine Arts and NYU, exhibited at Betty Parsons Gallery and Kornblee Gallery in 1974, and was included in the Smithsonian’s “Paper as Medium” (1978), the International Istanbul Biennial (1989), and the International Biennial of Paper Art (1992). The exhibition draws from her estate, represented by Sapar Contemporary.
This show matters because it rectifies the historical neglect of a female immigrant artist who contributed significantly to Minimalism and paper art, yet was excluded from the mainstream canon due to her gender and background. The reappraisal comes at a time when the 20th-century art canon is under increasing scrutiny, making the exhibition timely and part of a broader movement to recover overlooked artists. By presenting Bilgé’s delicate, conceptually rich works, the IAIA positions her as a quiet master whose practice transcends Minimalism, offering a new frontier for the medium and expanding the narrative of American art history.