Since the 90s, when contemporary art debates started in Turkey, disciplines such as performance, photography and video began to turn into art practices that were highly preferred by the artists of the period, especially through activities such as Young Events, Young Art, Contemporary Artists Exhibitions. The increase in the diversity of production in this field has led to the fact that video art has been seen as an artistic discipline and genre in Turkey apart from cinema, documentaries and other fields focused on moving images, since those days. Video art, which was frequently encountered in internationally prestigious contemporary art exhibitions such as the Istanbul Biennial in the 90s, became more visible when Istanbul Modern, Turkey's Museum of Modern Arts, opened in the early 2000s, included a wide selection of video-works in its permanent collection. In this way, it has consolidated its status as an artwork form that can be purchased and collected as one of the mainstream art disciplines. Today, in 2022, we are faced with professional alternative structures that focus only on video art and try to expand the exhibition and presentation possibilities of productions related to this discipline. This article focuses particularly on five models. The visibility policies and exhibition strategies of the dominant institutional examples such as Yama, Monitor, Bilsart, Senkron Video Festival will be examined and their contributions to the art scene in terms of video discipline will be discussed. This article aims to uncover the alternative bases of video art, explore the possibilities and commonalities, and set a starting point for young artists who will create new productions in this field.
Keywords: video art, public space, Contemporary art in Turkey, video narrative, moving images, exhibition models