Artists Ateş Alpar, Osman Bozkurt, Şafak Çatalbaş, Etem Şahin and Doğa Yirik, who are participating in the 12th term of SAHA Studio between July–December 2026, are sharing their ongoing productions with visitors at the mid-term gathering held on October 16 – 17.
The five artists selected among the 125 applications submitted to the open call for the 12th term, through evaluations carried out in collaboration with SAHA Studio’s former participants and the Selection & Advisory Board, and they continue to shape their research. The program, which supports artists from different cities in realizing the draft project proposals they have defined through the contribution of studio space, equipment, budget, and a professional network, aims, alongside the interaction, feedback, and exchanges among participants, to expand the dialogue established with visiting curators, artists, and former program participants to a broader audience during the midterm gatherings. Steffi Stouri, who will spend six weeks researching in Istanbul as part of a curatorial collaboration with ARTWORKS, will also meet visitors and introduce her practice.
Through the sounds and images they record, Ateş Alpar questions how bodies, communities and geographies are positioned within uniform historical narratives. Their practice explores ways to build archives and collective memory, particularly for queer communities. At SAHA Studio, Alpar is examining workplaces through the lens of precarity. Their research will consider the basic materials workers have used historically, the hierarchical distribution of colors in work clothing, and various forms of data about working life. Osman Bozkurt focuses on the spatial transformation of Süleymaniye, Unkapanı and Küçükpazar, among Istanbul’s oldest residential and commercial districts, and their present state of decay. For more than 15 years, he has photographed the changes brought about by waves of migration and unfinished urban renewal projects. Observing this area in the heart of Istanbul, which nevertheless resembles an isolated island, he is developing a book and an installation around migration and displacement, personal histories and testimonies, and the ideas of absence, traces and remains. In Slow Strike, Şafak Çatalbaş brings together butoh practice and film, television and actors’ unions in an imagined slowdown action, using performance to turn slowness into a form of resistance. Through workshops with participating crews, Çatalbaş is exploring how narratives of labour and resistance can be expressed through the body. Drawing on real stories, people and places, the process will be filmed through overlapping timelines and flows, and is intended to become a performance that at times includes the audience. Joining the program from İzmir, Etem Şahin is researching a reimagined diary kept during six months in Istanbul in 1951 by an artist born in İzmir in 1921 who later settled in Zurich. Through the fictional artist at the centre of Carnet d’Istanbul: Seeking for Vivienne Noir, the project aims to construct an alternative space for art history and memory. Doğa Yirik’s project focuses on the practices of young, self-taught video and photojournalists who document social movements. It explores what drives them to take to the streets and record events without seeking financial gain, while working toward a collectively produced film.
SAHA Studio Midterm Gathering
Friday, 16 October : 1pm – 7pm
Saturday, 17 October : 12pm – 7pm
