Erdal Duman: If You've Come, Throw a Stone at the Window

Pi Artworks Istanbul presents Erdal Duman’s first solo exhibition with the gallery If You've Come, Throw a Stone at the Window, on view from 9 May to 20 June.

Bringing together both new works and examples drawn from over a decade of the artist's practice, the exhibition transforms the viewer from observer into an active participant in its unfolding. The show greets visitors with a surprising encounter from the moment they arrive.

At the centre of the space stands the barricade, a work that embodies a forgotten reflex of solidarity against the plunder of nature, injustice, and violence. Initially dispersed across the space as a sculptural group of eighteen independent components, the structure becomes a living organism through the viewer's touch. Visitors are encouraged to assemble the parts, completing the barricade — and from that moment onward, a text slowly emerges on the gallery walls over the course of the exhibition. To sustain this experience, the barricade will be dismantled on designated days throughout the exhibition and rebuilt by new audiences through a collective act. Each reconstruction becomes a fresh experience that lets viewers directly inhabit the practices of resistance and being together.

The materials Duman employs in his work — soil, flag fittings, and ammunition forms — function as instruments that expose the manipulative language of power. As he questions the reduction of the individual to a being focused solely on survival, each work emerges as a technical intervention into society's rituals of “cleansing” and “camouflage.” For the artist, the world is passing through a process emptied of the true subject — one who exercises will, defends their rights, and is capable of saying “no.” The exhibition's title, If You've Come, Throw a Stone at the Window, is at once a provocative and hopeful call addressed to this vanished subject, urging them to return.

The artist conceives of this exhibition not as a fixed narrative but as an action that opens through time and is shaped by participation. Surprise elements that will emerge over the course of the exhibition — not fully disclosed in advance — are also part of this transformation, awaiting their encounter with the audience.

Erdal Duman's If You've Come, Throw a Stone at the Window can be seen at Pi Artworks Istanbul through 20 June 2026.