Diyarbakir

Philip Popoff

18.09 - 10.10.2025

Diyarbakir is a place that lies very far away. A place made deliberately so unreachable that one may arrive there, but returning becomes nearly impossible. Perhaps it doesn’t even exist—it may be nothing more than a double mirage. Philip Popov’s drawings strive to uncover this place: first as a concept, then as a physical space, and finally as a deconstruction of the whole into separate elements resembling sculptural objects.

Diyarbakir is a compact city where the buildings are connected like bricks, forming a single entity. Some of the drawings construct basalt-like walls, others reveal the imaginary skeleton of the city, while yet others resemble a human-sized termite mound whose cells assemble into a whole with the potential to grow in all directions.

Philip explores this imaginary city as a place designed to restrict freedom, yet simultaneously to embody the symbol of that lack of freedom. Far from the place one wished to make free, one is desperately forced to remain trapped between thick black walls.

Anton Staykov