Symbolic Vault: Exhibition & Opening Reception
- Exhibition
- RSVP Required for Opening event
Where nature, technology and human experience become entangled.
Exhibition Details
Dates:
18 September – 24 October 2026
Opening Reception: 18 September
Location:
Vault level, Kasa Gallery, Istanbul
🎨 Artists: Paulo Arraiano · Rebecca Najdowski · Ecem Dilan Köse
Visitor Experience
- Immersion in layered soundscapes and shifting visual environments
- Reorientation as familiar boundaries between natural and artificial blur
- Connection to nonhuman rhythms
This September, step beneath the streets of Istanbul and into Kasa Gallery’s underground former bank vault for Symbolic Vault: Entanglements of Human, Nature, Machine, an exhibition bringing together three artists from around the world.
Presented by Art Voyage in collaboration with Kasa Gallery, the exhibition features works by Paulo Arraiano, Rebecca Najdowski and Ecem Dilan Köse.
Through moving image, sound, installation, performance and digital media, the three artists explore how technology, ecology and memory are reshaping the ways we perceive, understand and inhabit the world.
Step Inside Symbolic Vault
What happens when technology is no longer separate from nature? When machines begin to perceive, landscapes become data, and intelligence extends beyond the human?
Symbolic Vault invites visitors into immersive environments where perception is continually reshaped and new ways of sensing the world begin to emerge.
Rather than presenting static objects, the artworks unfold through rhythm, process, and interaction, drawing on living systems, ecological processes, digital technologies, and human gesture.
Together, they explore the evolving entanglements between human, nature, and machine, imagining a symbiotic world where boundaries dissolve and meaning emerges through interdependence and continual exchange.
Why Symbolic Vault?
Symbolic Vault began with a simple question: what if a space once built to protect material wealth could hold entirely different forms of value?
Bringing together three artists working across ecology, technology and perception, the exhibition transforms Kasa Gallery’s former bank vault into a space for memory, sound, ecological traces and digital intelligence. Their works create unexpected connections and open up possibilities for how human, natural and technological systems might coexist.
At a moment when artificial intelligence, environmental change and technological development are reshaping our relationship with the world, Symbolic Vault asks us to reconsider what we perceive, what we preserve and, ultimately, what we value.
“Rather than understanding the vault as a secure container, the project approaches it as a contested territory where memory, ritual, mythology and power continuously negotiate one another.
The vault ceases to function as architecture and becomes a political technology, one that regulates not only objectsbut also the conditions through which knowledge is preserved, forgotten or rendered invisible.”
Paulo Arraiano, participating artist
A Bank Vault Reimagined
Hidden beneath Kasa Gallery, the former bank vault gives the exhibition its physical and conceptual starting point.
Once designed to safeguard material wealth, the Vault now holds more intangible forms of value: memory, sound, ecological traces, images and digital intelligence.
Its architecture is more than a backdrop. The underground chambers become part of the exhibition itself, transforming a space once associated with security, storage and material value into a place for experimentation, perception and exchange.
What does a vault hold when material wealth disappears?
In an era shaped by ecological instability, artificial intelligence and rapidly evolving technologies, Symbolic Vault invites us to imagine new forms of coexistence, where ecological processes, human experience, and machine intelligence are understood as part of the same evolving network.
Three artists, three perspectives
Paulo Arraiano, Rebecca Najdowski and Ecem Dilan Köse each offer a distinct perspective on the shifting boundaries between the organic and the technological. Their practices investigate the increasingly complex relationships between living systems, technological innovation and environmental change, considering how bodies, landscapes, images and algorithms shape our understanding of the world.
Across the Vault, familiar distinctions begin to blur: organic and artificial, physical and digital, human and non-human. Rather than positioning technology in opposition to nature, the exhibition asks what becomes possible when we understand these systems as deeply entangled.
Rebecca Najdowski | Multi-media artist, Australia
Rebecca Najdowski is an American/Australian artist whose work examines imaging technologies, the mediation of nature, and visualisations of the climate emergency. Rebecca engages with the material and political implications of representing nature through photographic technologies. Using analog and digital materials — often counter to their intended use — her artworks offer alternative modes to habitual ways of seeing, and sensing, more-than-human nature.
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Paulo Arraiano | Interdisciplinary artist, Portugal
Paulo Arraiano is a visual artist whose practice explores the intersections of body, landscape, and technology. Paulo’s research relates to the idea of visual seismography, assessing surges concerning new natural, social and cultural paradigms. This artistic production interweaves with his research which involves matter and antimatter, and engages the body, the landscape and technology to address questions concerning climate changes, biosphere, extinction, transhumanism and the anthropocene.
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Ecem Dilan Köse | Conceptual digital artist, Turkey
Ecem Dilan Köse is a Turkish conceptual digital artist whose practice bridges organic textures and digital data. Drawing on her background in architecture, she works across installation, AI, VR, AR, sculpture, and audio-visual performance to explore the evolving relationships between human, ecological, and virtual realms. In 2024, she received the İşbank Artificial Intelligence Factory Competition Award alongside Refik Anadol, recognising her innovative use of artificial intelligence in contemporary art.
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Join us this september
Opening during Istanbul’s September art season, Symbolic Vault brings together international artistic perspectives within one of the city’s most distinctive contemporary art spaces.
Join us for the Exhibition Opening on 18 September 2026 and be among the first to experience the exhibition alongside the artists and Art Voyage community.
Email info@artvoyagebiennial.org.uk to reserve your place at the exhibition opening reception.
Special Events: Beyond the Exhibition
VIP Exhibition Opening Reception
18 September 2026
Kasa Gallery Vaults
Step deeper into Symbolic Vault for an exclusive opening reception in Kasa Gallery’s historic underground vaults. Experience the exhibition after hours, encounter works across moving image, sound and installation, meet the artists and curator, and continue the evening over drinks with Istanbul’s international community of collectors, curators, patrons and art professionals.
Panel Discussion on Art, Technology and Future Ecologies
23 September 2026
Venue TBC
What happens when we begin to perceive the world beyond the human? Join us for an evening of ideas, exchange and conversation during Istanbul’s September art season.
Bringing together artists, curators and academics, this panel explores how art responds to emerging technologies, ecological change and non-human forms of perception.
VIP Curated Exhibition Tour
24 September 2026
Kasa Gallery Vaults
Go behind the works with an intimate guided tour offering guests a closer encounter with the exhibition and the extraordinary underground space in which it unfolds.
Hear directly from the curator and artists as they reveal the processes, ideas and questions behind the works, exploring the intersections of ecology, technology and the evolving relationships between humans, machines and the natural world.
Be inspired, consider new ways of sensing and thinking.
Reflect on the meanings and implications of interdependence, ecology, and technology. Gain new understandings about climate, AI, and post-human futures; through empathy, awareness, and new forms of entangled thinking rooted in interdependence and symbiosis.
Visit Kasa Gallery’s Symbolic Vault to experience an unforgettable, multi-sensory, immersive exhibition that challenges perceptions of human, nature, and machine relationships.
Events
VIP Exhibition Opening Reception with Contemporary Istanbul
Date : September 18th
Venue : Kasa Gallery Vaults
Kasa Gallery and Art Voyage Biennial CIC are delighted to invite Contemporary Istanbul VIP guests to an exclusive opening of Symbolic Vault: Entanglements of Human, Nature, Machine, followed by a drinks reception in Kasa Gallery’s historic underground vaults.
he evening offers Contemporary Istanbul’s international collectors, curators, patrons and arts professionals the opportunity to experience the exhibition before the public programme, meet the artists and curator, and continue conversations over drinks in one of Istanbul’s most distinctive contemporary art venues.
VIP Curated Tours with Contemporary Istanbul
Date : September 24th
Venue : Kasa Gallery Vaults
As part of Contemporary Istanbul’s VIP programme, Art Voyage Biennial CIC is pleased to invite collectors, curators, arts professionals and invited guests to an exclusive guided tour of Symbolic Vault at Kasa Gallery.
Led by curator Tima Jam alongside exhibiting artists Paulo Arraiano and Ecem Dilan Köse, the tour offers a behind-the-scenes introduction to the exhibition, exploring its themes of ecology, technology, and the evolving relationship between humans, machines and the natural world through installation, moving image and sound.
Panel Discussion on Art, Technology and Future Ecologies
Date : September 23rd
Venue : Soho House Istanbul
Coinciding with Symbolic Vault, an international exhibition at Kasa Gallery presented by Art Voyage Biennial CIC, Soho House Istanbul will host an exclusive evening of discussion and networking exploring the relationship between art, technology and the more-than-human world.
Taking place during Istanbul’s September art season, a panel discussion titled “Post-Human Perception: Seeing and Hearing Beyond Ourselves” will bring together leading artists, curators and academics to examine how contemporary art responds to emerging technologies, ecological change and shifting ideas of perception.
Our Partners & Collaborators
If you are an artist interested in collaborating with us, or if you would like to learn more about the work we do at Art Voyage, email us at info@artvoyagebiennial.org.uk
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