Open Closet marked the first-ever exhibition in Turkey by the internationally acclaimed artist duo Skuja Braden—a long-standing collaboration between Ingūna Skuja (Latvia) and Melissa Braden (USA). Curator Pınar Goodstone first encountered their boundary-breaking ceramic universe at the Latvian Pavilion of the Venice Biennial in 2022 and was so struck by its emotional and formal intensity that she reached out immediately. What followed was a yearlong collaboration across borders, culminating in this Istanbul debut. The show not only challenged conventional forms and materials but also presented a dreamlike cosmos where East and West, myth and reality, gender and fluidity coexisted in bold, sensuous balance.

Skuja Braden’s art embodies a new way to experience and arrange ceramic—a vehicle for visual leaps of daring, experiments with and distortions of syntax, forming a new cosmos that contains everything we are and all we never dared to be. In reverence for pure love, they epically embrace both East and West, interweaving Marilyn Monroe and Geisha, angels and demons, diptych and triptych. Standing before their world, one becomes electric—mystified, euphoric, and human—transformed by unknown structures of power. You are the eyes that watch yourself. And you are the one being seen as if in a playful dream.

With works that merge sculpture, painting, and installation, Open Closet revealed an intimate landscape of inner lives—playful, erotic, political, and spiritual. Each piece invited viewers to see themselves from multiple perspectives: as subject, observer, dreamer. This celebration of visibility, self-invention, and queer beauty resonated profoundly within Root’s walls. The exhibition was also a milestone moment for Skuja Braden—their first show in Istanbul, and one that concluded with a major acquisition by collector Ömer Koç for his private collection, affirming the duo’s place in contemporary art history.