The Liu Lobby Gallery invites you to the pop-up exhibition Road Stories, an intimate and contemplative second installation of the new “Solidarity” series. Road Stories features 11 paintings by Nurhayat Güneş Aytaç, artist and Visiting Scholar in UBC’s Department of Curriculum & Pedagogy.
Visit the gallery during its open hours from December 5 – 19, and join us for a small gathering on Tuesday, December 9th at 2 pm.
Pop-Up Exhibition: December 5 – 19, 2025
Mini Reception: December 9, 2-3 PM
The exhibit is free and open to the public during regular building hours, 9am – 5pm. It is located in the Lobby on the first floor.
Curated by Ellinee Nelson
About the Exhibition:
As a young child, artist Nurhayat Güneş Aytaç and her family of seven migrated by train across Turkey. This journey was not merely a geographical shift; it was a threshold, a transformation, a new beginning. They packed light with a single suitcase, signalling the weight of what was left behind: familiar houses, neighborhood bonds, traditions, daily rituals, stories, and relatives…
The family parted with not just belongings, but the very fabric and memory of a life.
Road Stories offers an artistic reading of roads, migrations, losses, emerging new lives, and the fragile continuity of memory—beginning with this first threshold. Each work carries the rhythm of the journey, the linear persistence of the tracks, and the quiet tension of travel.
For the artist, the road is both a personal memory object and a universal metaphor of passage. Roads are places where identities form, emotions shift, and the past is rewritten. Thus, Road Stories opens itself to the viewer as a narrative that is simultaneously individual and collective, intimate and universal.
This exhibition follows the traces of a journey while inviting viewers to reflect on their own thresholds, their own passages, and their own road stories.
Artist Bio:
Born in 1977 in Kağızman, Kars, Nurhayat GÜNEŞ AYTAÇ completed her undergraduate studies in Art Education (Painting-Crafts Teaching) at Trakya University in 2009 and earned her Master’s degree from the same institution in 2013. Between 2015 and 2016, she was a visiting research scholar at the University of British Columbia, Canada, supported by a TÜBİTAK fellowship. In 2018, she received her PhD from Gazi University, Institute of Educational Sciences, Department of Art Education.
Aytaç has held four solo exhibitions in Turkey and has been recognized with the Achievement Award at the 74th State Painting and Sculpture Competition (in memory of painter Mihri Müşfik) and an Honorable Mention at the 4th Yunus Ensari Painting Competition. Her works have been featured in numerous group exhibitions, fairs, biennials, and symposiums both in Turkey and internationally. They are included in the collections of the Erzurum Painting and Sculpture
Museum and Gallery, Art Suites Gallery, Zervas Art Gallery, and the Efeler Municipality.
Beginning her academic career in 2011 as a Research Assistant at Dicle University’s Faculty of Education, Department of Fine Arts Education, Aytaç was appointed Assistant Professor in 2019 and promoted to Associate Professor in 2023. She continues to serve as a faculty member at Dicle University and, since February 1st 2025, has been a visiting scholar at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada, supported by a one-year TÜBİTAK fellowship.
