SAHA Studio Open

SAHA Studio, designed by SAHA as a program of research, interaction, and production for artists and curators, presents the projects of Mehmet Ali Boran, İrem Günaydın, Gizem Karakaş, Merve Kılıçer, and İrem Tokbetween 5 - 8 June, 2024. SAHA Studio Open, organized at SAHA Studio's spaces in Istanbul Manufacturers Center (İMÇ), is accompanied by events that delve into the production processes of the artists.
 
Mehmet Ali Boran, who resettled in Istanbul from Mardin for six months with the invitation of SAHA Studio, looks at the destruction caused by the phosphate extraction plant in Mazıdağ, which he has been observing since 2018. Boran, who archived this destruction with photographer Tehsin Baravi, constructs an installation of panoramic photographs to examine the destruction from a sociological and ecological perspective. İrem Günaydın, who explores movement between text and image in her artistic practice, is producing Musakhan, the first passage of the first convolut of her long-term project, OPUS: A Para-Opera Structure. OPUS combines text, design, and performing arts with its specially designed typeface Hamaset, referring to the grandeur of the opera. Gizem Karakaş's project Between Us, developed within the scope of SAHA Studio, documents Nil Yalter's journey from Paris to the Venice Biennale after the death of her life partner Joël Boutteville, focusing on intersubjective relationships through the themes of migration, friendship, loss, and longing. Merve Kılıçer uses a 16 mm analog camera to juxtapose monuments of ancient Anatolian civilizations that sanctified nature with images from today's mining sites in an installation to reveal the extent of environmental destruction. With her project, the artist aims to contribute to the climate justice solidarity movements with an artistic production. İrem Tok's project for SAHA Studio is an experimental research and installation focusing on the mud of the Golden Horn. Exploring the interaction between the natural environment and human intervention, Tok examines water and mud's natural, cultural, scientific, and ecological changes.
 
The projects of the artists in various mediums, who participated in the program under the supervision of the 2023-2024 SAHA Studio selection committee consisting of Çelenk Bafra, Kevser Güler, and Ali Kazma, are on view between 5 - 8 June.
 
5 June, Wednesday
15.00 – 17.00 : General visits
17.00 – 17.45     : İrem Tok | Artist Talk*
18.00 – 18.45     : Gizem Karakaş | Lecture Performance*
 
6 June, Thursday
11.00 – 18.00     : General visits
18.45 – 19.15     : Mehmet Ali Boran | Artist Talk*
 
7 June, Friday
11.00 – 18.00     : General visits
18.00 – 18.45     : Merve Kılıçer | Artist Talk*
 
8 June, Saturday
11.00 – 18.00     : General visits
14.00 – 14.45     : İrem Günaydın | Artist Talk*

SAHA Studio
İMÇ 5. Blok 5560 A-B
Hacı Kadın Mah, Atatürk Blv. No. 66
34134 Fatih/İstanbul

About SAHA Studio Artists
Mehmet Ali Boran (b. 1981, Mardin/Kızıltepe) graduated from the Ceramic Department of Sakarya University Faculty of Fine Arts in 2007. He produces works in various media such as video art, installation, ceramics, performance, and video novels. In his productions, the artist addresses issues of identity, displacement, cultural heritage, and memory in conjunction with environmental degradation and processes these notions in multiple layers. He scrutinizes the positioning of new-era security systems in his living environment and surroundings.
 
İrem Günaydın (b. 1989, Istanbul) lives and works in Istanbul, Turkey. After receiving her Foundation diploma from Chelsea College of Art and Design in 2011, she graduated from the Fine Arts department of Central Saint Martins University in London in 2014. Her works are oriented toward exploring tightly woven structures in art history, individual autonomy, and the fetishization of authenticity. This approach allows her to think without establishing a new center, creating an original and singular reality. Her practice is often organized around the act of writing; her installations emerge in the form of arrangements that bring together moving images, various print types, and sculptural elements.

Gizem Karakaş (b. 1987, Ankara) completed her undergraduate degree in Fine Arts at École des Arts de la Sorbonne in 2009, followed by a master's degree in Art and New Media at the same university in 2011. The artist's practice focuses on the struggles, ironies, comedies, and poetry of daily life. Through photography, video, sound, performance, and writing, Karakaş portrays various states of existence, interpersonal relationships, contexts, and situations through semi-fictional narratives, exploring the concept of intimacy through the ambiguous territories between the private and public, reality and fiction, art and life.

 
Merve Kılıçer (b. 1987, Istanbul) is an interdisciplinary artist and entrepreneur involved in art-focused activities. After studying Visual Arts at Istanbul Sabancı University, she completed her M.F.A. at the Rotterdam Piet Zwart Institute in 2019. Her work draws inspiration from historical and traditional forms of cultural and artistic production, aiming to transform them into contemporary experiences. While her practice engages with her personal history and experiences, it seeks to avoid a didactic approach and instead strives to find a politically engaged position.
 
İrem Tok (b. 1982) lives and works in Istanbul. The core concepts of Tok's art practice are fragility, transience, and helplessness. Playing with boundaries between humans, nature, and culture, the artist employs various mediums such as sculpture, painting, animation, and ceramics, creating atmospheres with delicate details. Tok's production process involves research, interpretation, exploration, collection, accumulation, contemplation, note-taking, drawing, and synthesis. By transforming symbols of knowledge like encyclopedias and books, she confronts historical narratives and encourages the subjective.