Abandoned Letters (Remembering Istanbul Alphabet), 2024
The donation to the Arteast 2000+ collection by Dilek Winchester, titled Abandoned Letters, focuses on the “Istanbul Alphabet,” created in 1879 by Şemsettin Sami. Sami was a lexicographer, novelist, and translator, and a key figure in both the reform of the Turkish language and Albanian nationalism, at a time when Albanians in the Ottoman Empire lacked a unified writing system.
Through her research-driven practice, Dilek Winchester investigates how the printed word and the typographic space create a sense of belonging. Her interest in the communities that are formed through publishing spans from artists’ zines to the hybrid printing world in the 19th-century Ottoman Empire. Her interests include the reform of the alphabet in Turkey, the symbolic meaning of letters, and the politics of translation.
Dilek Winchester is one of the most prominent contemporary Turkish artists and exhibits internationally. The work she donated to the collection was included in the exhibition Translated into Socialism, which was on view in 2025 at +MSUM, curated by Merve Elveren, with the researchers Sezgin Boynik and Tevfik Rada.
