Cristiana-Ștefania Culiță, museographer

1. 𝐻𝑖𝑠𝑎𝑟 𝐶𝑎𝑚𝑖𝑖
Izmir Series
40 × 30 cm, oil on cardboard, 2026

The new series dedicated to the city of Izmir continues artist Florian Doru Crihană’s ongoing exploration of urban environments, revealing their layered historical identities. The first work in the series focuses on the Hisar Mosque, drawing on a set of historical and visual references that the artist reorganizes into a unified image: the mosque built at the end of the 16th century, its relationship with the Kemeraltı Bazaar, and the role of the mihrab in orienting sacred space.

In “Hisar Camii,” the mosque’s gate becomes the central axis of the composition. The ornamental arch and the golden decoration of the mihrab niche are extracted from the interior of the building and brought to the exterior. This displacement alters the logic of real space: the mihrab, traditionally intended to guide prayer, now appears as a visual portal marking the threshold between the everyday life of the city and the symbolic territory of the image.

Around this central structure, Crihană introduces elements of urban life: the camel (documented in historical photographs of the old bazaar) and the ornamental carpet (evoking the commercial world of Kemeraltı and the decorative traditions associated with Islamic space). The background adds another layer through the silhouettes of mosques and minarets fading into the urban landscape. The work functions as an imagined reconstruction of a fragment of Izmir, where the city is condensed into a constellation of signs evoking architecture, commerce, and the sacred dimension of place.

This first work establishes the method the artist will continue in subsequent images: starting from the city’s visual elements and historical documents, and reorganizing them into scenes where historical reality and imaginative construction coexist.

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2. 𝐾ızlarağası Hanı
Izmir Series
40 × 30 cm, oil on cardboard, 2026

In “Kızlarağası Hanı,” the composition is structured around a clear relationship between the architectural framework and the intervention of decorative objects. The façade of the caravanserai—an inn designed for merchants and caravans—and the compact volume of the building establish a recognizable setting grounded in documented reality. The intervention emerges through an ensemble of carpets, traditional textiles used both as everyday objects and as goods of exchange. Removed from the logic of commercial display and rearranged, layered, and elevated into near-vertical forms, they create a visual mass that dominates the image.

The function of this carpet ensemble is explicit: a sign of hospitality, analogous to the red carpet in state protocol. While a carpet laid on the ground indicates a path of access, the vertical structure amplifies this idea, becoming a kind of symbolic portal. Access is thus ritualized, and entering the han becomes an act staged by Crihană.

Hospitality—essential to the very logic of the han—is fully realized by the artist in the atmosphere of the composition, revealing itself to the viewer through subtle elements.