How Syrian artists are livening up Turkey’s art scene

The drawing of a stylized lion’s head dominates the small booth reserved for Arthere — a collective of Turkish and Syrian artists — at Contemporary Istanbul, the city’s huge art fair that brings together dozens of galleries from New York to Tehran to Istanbul every September.

The drawing — black, red and green ink on paper — is called “Haydarpasa,” named after the 19th-century railway station that formed one of the stops of the Orient Express. The lion’s head, with its droopy eyes and all-too-symmetrical mane, is found on the stained-glass windows of the station built during the reign of strategic-minded Abdulhamid II, as the starting point of the Hejaz Railway. Located on the Asian side of Istanbul, the station was designed and built by two German architects — Otto Ritter and Helmuth Cuno — in neo-Renaissance style.