The two alumni share a deep interest in Ezra Pound.
An exhibition titled CANTO CXVII was held at Maçka Sanat Galerisi from March 3 to April 11, 2026, honoring the memory of the late poet and translator Can Alkor, who passed away in 2024. The exhibition revolved around the monumental work of Ezra Pound and featured Noyan’s visual “images” inspired by the cantos. The tribute connects to Alkor’s poetry book titled Canto CXVII (Norgunk Yayıncılık), which served as his imagined ending to Pound’s unfinished epic.
The exhibition beautifully brought together two generations of Robert College alumni. Efe Murat Balıkçıoğlu RC 06 (who writes under the pen name Efe Murad) is a professor of history and religion at Wellesley College. In 2021, he published Kantolar (The Cantos, Yapı Kredi Yayınları), a complete Turkish translation of Ezra Pound’s cantos that was eleven years in the making.
Forging an intergenerational friendship with Noyan through their shared interest in Pound’s poetry, Balıkçıoğlu contributed to the exhibition through a video piece, an in-gallery talk, and a dedicated essay published in the April– June 2026 issue of Yapı Kredi Yayınları’s literary periodical, Kitaplık.
In his displayed artwork, Noyan interprets historical venues like Venice and the Rialto Bridge, not merely as geographical backdrops but as ethical and metaphysical gateways. His grotesque figures vividly display the deformities imposed on the human form by rigid ideologies.
