Opening: Friday, February 13, 18:30

Sint vera vel ficta, taceantur sub rosa dicta.  

“Whether true or made up,
let words spoken under the rose
remain secret.”

—An anonymous Latin saying

Assigned social roles, routine acts of sacrifice, unacknowledged care work, shame and fear, suppressed desires, postponed anger, separations, whispers, and the tentative, improvised ways of holding on to life… Taking its title from the Latin phrase meaning “under the rose”—a symbol of discretion and privacy in Ancient Rome—Sub Rosa is Okyanus Çağrı Çamcı’s first solo exhibition. Interweaving the lives of her mother, grandmother, and aunts with her own, the artist traces the invisible bonds across generations. She focuses on the quiet forms of resistance and fragility produced by the “norms” embedded in household power relations, attending closely to the ways in which these conditions are enacted, rehearsed, and handed down in daily life. 

Sub Rosa resists the consolations of a linear narrative of the past, turning instead to what endures: inherited ways of seeing and being, the unspoken legacies of trauma, and the quiet persistence of conflict and miscommunication as they echo through bodies, emotions, identities, and relations. The artist does not attempt to fix these experiences into a single account, nor to speak on their behalf. Rather, the exhibition proposes a carefully held, fragile yet intentional ground for dialogue—a space in which those who identify as women may express themselves, in their own time and on their own terms.

Emerging from the artist’s engagement with her family archive, the exhibition frames the unveiling of identity not as a singular declaration, but as a form of co-presence: a sense of togetherness found not in a shared language or imposed consensus, but in inhabiting multiple perspectives, rhythms, and proximities—sometimes side by side, without words. Free from any compulsion to clarify, complete, repair, or reconcile, the artist renders visible the past in all its fractured, intermittent, and elusive complexity. Rooted in photograph albums, domestic objects, trousseaux, and untold stories, her works do not claim a fixed or exhaustive record of truth. Instead, they act as instruments reflecting the anger, resilience, strategies of endurance, and wisdom passed down among those whose identities are shaped around experiences of womanhood. Elements resonant with the artist’s childhood—roses, lace, yazmas, fragments of fabric, and fans—allude to the subtle, inventive, and strategic modes of communication and expression that unfold both within and beyond the home. In her paintings and installations, the need for literal representation gives way to an approach guided by intuition and a felt, perceptual closeness.

In Sub Rosa, family is seen not just as a biological or emotional bond, but as a political space—a “chosen” form of life shaped beyond one’s roots. Drawing on the lives of her mother, grandmother, and aunts, the artist turns her attention to her own body and ultimately to the experience of womanhood, observing how intimacies accumulated in private spheres surface in public life. Through an empathetic engagement with identities obscured by traditional structures, she implies that what remains unspoken is as integral to her works as what is articulated.

Sub Rosa explores memories from the artist’s childhood and adolescence, the ways these experiences resonate in her body, and her processes of self-discovery and coming out, situating them within familial memory, social conditions, and body politics. It invites contemplation of what is spoken “under the rose” through images, everyday objects, glances, gestures, and associations. In this way, the exhibition exists not as a spectacle, but as a platform that fosters reciprocal presence. It is neither a narrative of healing nor of liberation; rather, it is composed as a threshold at which the individual and the collective realities converge, allowing concepts in tension—love and conflict, continuity and rupture, resilience and vulnerability—to be reinterpreted in tandem.

This exhibition was realised with support from the Prince Claus 2025 Seed Award and theNarrative Revolution Fellowship, led by @ourcollectivepractice, and co-sponsored by Grantmakers 4 Girls of Color and Global Narrative Hive.                  

Exhibition Design: Sena Çelebi

Print: Lamarts

Acknowledgments
Birgül Doğan, Delal Eken, Hilal Mumcu, Kübra Ayyıldız, Melek Demirel, Merve Elveren, Perihan Uzunalioğlu, Sayime Demirel, Seçil Epik, Sevim Sancaktar, Şenel Demirel, Jotun