Landscape of Mercy, or the Art of Giving Back to the Earth

During Contemporary Istanbul, Aliée, the hotel occupying the former Imperial Naval Shipyard of Tersane on the Golden Horn, unveils Landscape of Mercy, a monumental tapestry commissioned from Dutch artist Claudy Jongstra. The work has grown out of the land itself, and in many ways speaks to a cultural ambition that extends well beyond the idea of building a collection.

At first glance, it could be mistaken for a painting. More than seven meters long, it moves through deep madder red, walnut gold, woodland greens, and shades of indigo. Only when you come closer does the illusion disappear. You begin to see the wool, the variations in density, the small irregularities in the color. Nothing has been painted. The material has been grown, carded, felted, and woven.

Jongstra created Landscape of Mercy specifically for Aliée. Unveiled this week during Contemporary Istanbul, it now becomes part of the hotel’s permanent collection, marking the second edition of its Art Season. The work feels particularly at home here.

Aliée: Where Craft Returns to the Shipyard

Aliée is housed within Tersane-i Amire, the Imperial Naval Shipyard founded shortly after the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul in 1453. For centuries, the site was a place of production, where shipbuilders, tailors, dyers, and other craftsmen worked alongside one another. Color would have been an ordinary part of life in these workshops. The empires have changed, but the stone walls, arches, and tall windows remain.

Jongstra’s own practice begins much closer to the ground. The wool she uses comes from Drenthe Heath sheep, an ancient breed that she raises herself on the Dutch heathlands. Her biodynamic cotton is grown in Egypt; the silk is organic, and the merino comes from Spain. For color, she turns to madder root, woad, weld, walnut husks, sage, and Japanese indigo. She also looks to less obvious sources, including brewery residues and the ashes of a forge.

Over the years, this has developed into something larger than a way of making textiles. Jongstra has built an ecosystem around her practice, bringing together animal husbandry, the cultivation of dye plants, and techniques that had all but disappeared from contemporary use. Felting, carding, embroidery: these are not preserved as historical gestures, but brought back into the present.

There is also a clear philosophy behind it. “We can no longer simply take the riches of the earth without giving anything back,” Jongstra said. “We must work regeneratively and act in harmony with nature.”

The word mercy is central to that idea. For Jongstra, compassion cannot stop at human relationships. It must extend to the natural world and to all living things. The tapestry becomes, in this sense, more than an image of a place. It suggests a way of looking at the world around us.

Art That Appears Along the Way

The tapestry is one part of a larger program. For its second Art Season, Aliée has placed works throughout the hotel and its grounds, allowing the architecture to determine where they belong. In the Courtyard, Tony Cragg’s sculptures take on an almost organic quality against the old shipyard walls. In the Hasbahçe garden, two works by Gregor Hildebrandt bring a quieter presence, drawing on his long-standing interest in music and its traces. On the façade, the French artist Youri Cansell, known as Mantra, has created a large-scale entomological display featuring butterflies from Turkey and the Istanbul region.

At Aliée, art is not necessarily something you set out to see. It appears along the way.

It is there in the light of the courtyard, in the garden, on the façade, and in the spaces between one part of the hotel and another. You might come across it on a walk before dinner or on your way back at night. It becomes part of the rhythm of a stay rather than an activity in itself.

The hotel can be reached by boat, crossing the Golden Horn before arriving among stone walls that have stood for centuries. The next morning, you may find yourself looking again at Jongstra’s tapestry and noticing something you missed the night before. There is a certain restraint throughout Aliée. The architecture is carefully restored, the service considered, but neither is allowed to overwhelm the experience. There is space for the works, and for the people staying there.

From Collecting Art to Commissioning It

Aliée could have approached art simply by assembling a collection. Instead, it chose to commission new work.

That decision changes the relationship between the artist and the place. An artwork made for a particular setting, and intended to remain there, requires time and trust. “Our cultural vision rests on the belief that hospitality can create meaningful encounters between art, place, and people,” says Hatice Tamince Ülker, art and culture patron of Tersane Istanbul.

The idea extends beyond the hotel itself. Artists, collectors, gallerists, travelers, and Istanbul residents meet here around the works, making Aliée as much a place to gather as a place to stay. Its artistic program changes with each season, giving the hotel a sense of movement rather than a fixed identity.

The ambition is ultimately straightforward: to give artists the opportunity to make new work, to give that work a place to live, and to bring it into contact with an audience. In doing so, Aliée is becoming part of Istanbul’s contemporary art landscape in its own right.

Where Istanbul’s Art World Comes Together

During Contemporary Istanbul, the connection is particularly natural. The fair is only a short distance away, and it is easy to move between its galleries and the hotel’s courtyards. Later in the evening, when the fair closes, conversations continue beneath the arches of the former shipyard.

For Hatice Tamince Ülker, Landscape of Mercy represents “respect for what came before us, care for the world we inhabit, and the imagination to shape what comes next.”

Six centuries after the dyers who once worked here, color has returned to the shipyard. This time, it arrives in the form of wool, dyed with roots, plants, and the knowledge of the land.

A new landscape has taken its place on the Golden Horn. And it is one worth making the journey to see.