Deadline extended for Istanbul Airport's IGART Art Competition

By Tuba Ongun

ANKARA (AA) - Istanbul Airport on Wednesday extended a deadline for entries in an art competition it is holding due to February's devastating earthquakes.

Artists now have until June 16 to make submissions to the IGART Art Competition, bringing together the diverse cultural memory of Türkiye's Anatolian heartland.

The winning entry will fetch a grand prize of 2 million Turkish liras (nearly $104,000) and will be displayed for millions of national and international visitors to enjoy, according to a statement by airport operator IGA's art organization, IGART.

Led by fine arts professor Husamettin Kocan, IGART's committee consists of artists renowned in different fields, from painting to sculpting, architecture to criticism, curation to academia. Its members are Marcus Graf, Mehmet Ali Guveli, Gulveli Kaya, Deniz Odabas, Seckin Pirim, Murat Tabanlıoglu, Seyhun Topuz, and Nazli Pektas.

Participants who qualify for the second round of the competition, which is taking place for the second time, will be required to pay an entry fee of 50,000 liras ($2,600) to the project owners.

On Feb. 6, magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 quakes struck numerous Turkish provinces, taking more than 50,000 lives.

Over 13 million people in the country have been affected by the quakes, as well as many others in northern Syria.