An art exhibition that opens Thursday at the monastery interior in Bodrum, Turkey, features works from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Among them are works by artists like Gustav Klimt, Gustav Guggenheim, and Georges Simenon.
“We are in the middle of a zombie apocalypse,” says Yayla Aydar, a local artist and the director of the exhibition.
“People are dying, so this is really important to me.”
The exhibition is an attempt to draw attention to the growing trend of turning Turkey into a zombie utopia.
The government, in a bid to preserve its national identity, has created a series of zombie monuments, like a statue of a medieval warrior that has been placed in the capital Ankara.
But the government also has a campaign to promote the art of modernism.
The latest exhibition, “Art of the Dead,” features an installation by artist Gülsel Fikret, who died in 2013, that uses a modernist concept of zombie art to explore what happens to people when they die.
“It’s a real example of how we can do modernism in this kind of way,” says Fikert, who also created the work in Istanbul, where he was born.
“I like the fact that it’s modern and that the people who live here have become so attached to their culture.
The whole world, even the dead, have become an object.”