1 January–31 December 2023
Members initiative
Grant Holders
As of 2018, two scholarships will be granted annually to artists who live in Istanbul. The existing Istanbul stipend of the Senate Department for Culture and Europe was expanded to a true exchange, with a jury annually selecting two artists from Istanbul to be sent to Berlin and vice versa. The aim is to further enhance the relations between the partner cities of Berlin and Istanbul as well as the connections to the Turkish art scene. This is done with the conviction that international exchange and direct communication allow cultural diversity be experienced as an enrichment, inviting people to a change in perspective.
The scholarship takes place as part of a cooperation between the neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK) and ZK/U (from 2018 to mid 2021), from June of 2021 on with Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien in Berlin, and DEPO in Istanbul.
January 15 – June 15, 2023
Özge Açıkkol
Özge Açıkkol works at the intersection of art, socio-spatial practices, literature, and social pedagogy. She is primarily interested in the city and how it reproduces itself through the micro-actions and interactions of its inhabitants. These micro-actions of reproducing the urban environment usually emerge from the survival tactics of citizens facing various levels of urban poverty. Her recent research is on new trajectories of art and activism relationship in the urban sphere. She will do a series of interviews with different actors, to produce new knowledge of the public space as commons, during her residency in Berlin.
Özge Açıkkol (b. 1976) studied fine arts and painting at Marmara University in Istanbul. Recently she participated in Reflections From The Women’s Archives exhibition, Depo İstanbul, 2022 and she took part in BAK’s (basis voor actuele kunst) Fellowship for Situated Practice between September 2021 – June 2022. She participated in numerous collaborations and projects at home and abroad as a member of the artist collective Oda Projesi. In autumn 2022, the project ANA#3, in which the artists deal with motherhood, will be presented at the 17th Istanbul Biennial.
Events:
Friday, 28 April 2023, 19:00 (en)
Kunstquartier Bethanien, Studio 139, Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin
Artist talk “nGbK in Kreuzberg” with Özge Açıkkol (Scholarship Istanbul-Berlin) as part of “Prelude 2023”
Moderation: Ingo Arend
The Istanbul-based artist Özge Açıkkol has been living and working at Kunstquartier Bethanien since January 15, 2023 as a fellow of the Berlin Senate and the nGbK. As part of the Istanbul-based artist collective Oda Projesi, Açıkkol works at the intersection of art, socio-spatial practices, literature, and social pedagogy.
July 15 – December 15, 2023
Fatma Çelik
For more than a decade, Fatma Çelik has been producing photography and video works on the issues of identity, memory, ecology, and gender. As a Kurdish woman artist who has been working in Northern Kurdistan for many years, she is especially interested in narratives and archives around the tense situation that Kurdish people are facing in that region and their lives in the diaspora.
In Berlin, Çelik will continue and expand her long-term research project Back to Nature with women who have created their own space in the Hevrin Xelef Garden under the umbrella of Flamingo e.V., a Berlin-based organization that works mostly with migrants. In Back to Nature she follows Kurds, Alevis, Assyrians, and Chaldeans who have returned to their villages evacuated in the 1990s, and have initiated practicing organic agriculture and animal husbandry there. Now she wants to follow Kurds and other communities living in the diaspora who cannot return to their villages and created gardens/spaces for themselves in the places where they live.
Fatma Çelik (b. 1987) graduated from İnönü University (Malatya) Department of Psychological Counseling and Guidance in 2009. Between 2012-2021 she was one of the members of NarPhotos Collective. She participated in several group exhibitions such as REGENERATE: Noorderlicht Internationaal Photo Festival, Groningen, Friesland, Drenthe, NL (2023), Cultural Dialogue: Artistic Collaboration: Support for Production: To Look, Record and Tell in order to Remember at Depo, İstanbul (2022), On Solitude and Water at Depo, İstanbul / Bomontiada, İstanbul / Amed Şehir Tiyatrosu, Diyarbakır / Çetin Emeç Sanat Galerisi, Izmir (2018-2020), Women and Prison 5, Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality Exhibition Hall (2016) and On the Road, Istanbul Modern (2014).
Events:
Friday, December 8, 2023, 5 pm (ger/tur)
Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien
Artist talk “Back To Nature / Doğaya Dönüş” with Fatma Çelik in conversation with Ingo Arend
moderated by Can Mileva Rastovic
For more than a decade, Fatma Çelik has been producing photography and video works on the issues of identity, memory, ecology, and gender. As a Kurdish woman artist who has been working in Northern Kurdistan for many years, she is especially interested in narratives and archives around the tense situation that Kurdish people are facing in that region and their lives in the diaspora.
In Berlin, Çelik will continue and expand her long-term research project Back to Nature with women who have created their own space in the Hevrin Xelef Garden under the umbrella of Flamingo e.V., a Berlin-based organization that works mostly with migrants. In Back to Nature she follows Kurds, Alevis, Assyrians, and Chaldeans who have returned to their villages evacuated in the 1990s, and have initiated practicing organic agriculture and animal husbandry there. Now she wants to follow Kurds and other communities living in the diaspora who cannot return to their villages and created gardens/spaces for themselves in the places where they live.
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