1 January–31 December 2022
Members initiative
Grant Holders
Funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe, this year’s fellowship will be given to Kurdish artist and freelance curator Barış Seyitvan. The one-year fellowship is for people working in arts, media, and culture who have left their previous countries of residence due to the political situation there, and is intended to enable Barış Seyitvan to work independently as an artist in collaboration with the nGbK. A total of 32 applications were received for the 2022 funding year, of which a total of 12 fellowships were selected as part of the Weltoffenes Berlin program. The jury included Lisa Benjes, Can Sungu and Nora Al-Badri.
As an artist and curator, Barış Seyitvan has left Turkey in 2019 and moved to Germany. In light of this, his artistic-curatorial theme on which he is currently working is migration. The focus of his artistic research is on the cultural milieus created by artists in exile, exploring the crucial role they play in the formation of new ideas in their respective cultural histories.
The objective of his fellowship is to further develop his latest project: Mapping Artists in Exile from the Middle East will focus on mapping the artists who have had to migrate from Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey to various countries around the world, primarily Europe and North America. With the support of nGbK, it will be possible to digitally conduct interviews with the artists, which will then be archived online and made available to the public.
Barış Seyitvan (born 1982, Diyarbakır/Turkei) participated as an artist in the exhibition The Heirs and in So Near Yet So Far at Villa Waldberta in Munich, both in 2020. Through the Artists At Risk program, he completed a residency at ZKM/Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe/Germany in 2019 and subsequently in Suomenlinna in Helsinki/Finland. He has also curated numerous exhibitions, including The Immunity at Galerie der Künstler*innen in Munich, as well as in The Cure at Galerie Hinterland in Vienna, both in 2021. Furthermore two editions of the Istanbul International Art Fair TÜYAP (2017, 2018); the photography exhibition ÊZÎDXAN at Galerie Hinterland in Vienna/Austria; Woman and Diyarbakır Prison at the Museum Coordination Center of Diyarbakır/Turkey; Kurdistan International Art Meeting at Amed Art Gallery, Diyarbakır/Turkey; Drawing From Memory of Anfal / Kurdish Genocide at Amed Art Gallery, Diyarbakır/Turkey; and Here as the Centre of the World, organized by the Netherlands Art Institute (DAI) in 2007 and shown in six different cities (Beirut, Damascus, Enschede, Khartoum, Diyarbakır and Taipei).
The fellowship at nGbK will provide him with the means to continue his artistic-curatorial work within the framework and structure of nGbK. It is the aim of the fellowship to integrate artists from conflict areas into the cultural structures of Berlin in a way that opens up a long-term perspective for them.
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