Margaret R. Thompson - studio portrait of the artist
Margaret R. Thompson’s Temenos: The Inland Sea invites visitors into a contemplative journey through ritual, landscape and transformation in her first solo exhibition in Türkiye. Presented within the atmospheric Byzantine cistern beneath Istanbul’s historic Zeyrek Çinili Hamam, the site-specific installation combines painting, silk works, sound and scent to create an immersive experience that blurs the boundaries between the physical and spiritual. Inspired by the ancient Greek concept of the temenos—a sacred space set apart for reflection and renewal—the exhibition explores humanity’s enduring connection to nature, memory and the origins of life.
Curated by Anlam De Coster, the exhibition is installed within the Byzantine-era cistern beneath the restored 16th-century hammam designed by Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan, where a contemporary art space now occupies the historic subterranean structure. Created specifically for the space, the immersive installation brings together painting, textile works, sound, and scent to explore ritual, purification, transformation, and the relationship between interior and physical worlds.
Margaret R. Thompson Firmament’s Gate, 2026 Oil, collected earth, mica, raw pigment, volcanic rock dust, turmeric and Temple oil on linen
Working with materials sourced from Istanbul, Thompson infused her paintings with wax, sand, soil, mica, spices, plant oils, and water from the Sea of Marmara, incorporating the city’s physical landscape and layered history directly into the work. Spirals, vessel-like forms, and mythological motifs recur throughout the exhibition, drawing viewers inward toward the cistern itself, once part of the life-sustaining infrastructure of Byzantine Constantinople.
Margaret R. Thompson Temenos, 2026 Oil, collected earth, raw pigment, and wax on linen
The work draws on the ancient Greek term temenos, which designates a sacred precinct set apart from ordinary life, a sanctuary offering protection and passage between human and divine realms. In psychological terms, the word also refers to an inner shelter: a contained space in which one may safely encounter the unconscious. Here, beneath the hammam, these meanings converge.
Zeyrek Cinili Hamam , women hot room –
Historically, the hammam itself functioned as a temenos: a threshold space set apart from everyday life, where social hierarchies temporarily dissolved and purification rituals transformed body and mind within a shared sanctuary. The Byzantine cistern extends this passageway into the subterranean. Within Byzantine culture, cisterns formed part of the city’s essential infrastructure: enclosed bodies of water designed to gather, hold, and circulate what sustained life beneath the surface. Thompson envisions the cistern as an inland sea and proposes descent into this space as a conscious act, a movement toward inward attention and depth. Her paintings and textile works function as perceptual fields, inviting sustained attention and sensory attunement. Drawing on archetypal forms and primordial elements, they evoke depth of time and origins while offering a quiet refuge for the mind.
Margaret R. Thompson The Invitation, 2026 Oil, collected earth, volcanic rock, mica, raw pigment, turmeric, and Temple oil on linen
Thompson’s paintings are structured through axial compositions, often organized around a central spine that reads as a conduit or passage. Vessel-like forms recur alongside spirals and vortices, suggesting cycles of purification, and rebirth. Seen within a Byzantine cistern that once held the city’s lifeline, these motifs frame the inland sea not as a landscape, but as a life-giving process of circulation and transformation — a rhythm of ebb and flow contained within permeable boundaries. Winged chimeras and mythological beings surface intermittently, yet Thompson’s visual language resists fixed narratives. Her material vocabulary incorporates oils, spices, waters, and silks sourced in Istanbul, alongside natural pigments and earth gathered from different geographies.
The introduction of scent and sound further deepens engagement with the work and environment. In collaboration with Istanbul-based aromatherapy brand Homemade Aromaterapi, Thompson developed a custom scent for the space, a gesture directly linked to the original meaning of temenos. In Ancient Greece, fragrance was not ornamental but fundamental to the experience of sanctuaries; it defined sacred space and rendered the presence of supernatural forces perceptible. Burnt offerings, perfumed oils, aromatic plants, resin, and incense marked a sensory threshold between the everyday world and divine territory. Like scent, sound operates as an atmospheric threshold: an invisible yet enveloping presence that reshapes spatial perception and attunes the body to subtle rhythms of flow and resonance. Composed of recordings from springs around Santa Fe, where Thompson is based, the installation links these disparate locations and cultures through the primordial element of water.
Margaret R. Thompson Where Fire Meets Water, 2026 Oil and wax on linen
Temenos: The Inland Sea ultimately attempts to recreate a form of “cultural synesthesia,” in which smell, sound, image, and gesture converge to shape collective perception. In this multisensory field, the sacred is not represented but experienced. The exhibition invites visitors to undertake a literal and metaphorical descent, encountering the cistern as both refuge and inner landscape — a foundational space of containment and transformation where the boundaries between sensory modalities blur, and the atmosphere of the sacred extends beyond the limits of architecture.
Curated by Anlam de Coster – Find more information HERE
Zeyrek Çinili Hamam, Istanbul – Find more information HERE
17 April – 30 August 2026
Address: Zeyrek, İtfaiye Cd. No:44, 34083 Fatih/İstanbul Phone: +90 (212) 521 21 61 Opening Hours Cistern: Tuesday-Sunday 10.00-18.00. (Free admission) Bathing: Tuesday-Sunday 08.00-22.00. Museum: Tuesday-Sunday 10.00-18.00. (Free admission on Thursdays.) The complex is closed on Mondays.
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