Slavs and Tatars

Germany

In collaboration with Slavs and Tatars Residency since 2020, SAHA supports the participation of a curator/researcher in the residency-mentorship program in Berlin. Slavs and Tatars supports the participants they host to build networks and to conduct research in Berlin.

The first participant of the program between November-December 2020 period was Alper Turan, who was selected among the nominations made by curators at Arter, The Istanbul Biennial, Pera Museum, SAHA, and SALT. Through the nominations of same institutions, curator Aylime Aslı Demir was invited to participate in the second term held between March-May 2022.

Curator Deniz Kırkalı was selected among four candidates for the third collaboration period of Slavs and Tatars Residency in April-May 2023. Contributing to Slavs and Tatars’ different projects throughout her residency, Kırkalı organized an event at the Pickle Bar on 19 May 2023 with the participation of the artist, Aliaskar Abarkas who is based between Esfahan and London.

About Slavs and Tatars

Slavs and Tatars is an internationally-renowned art collective devoted to an area East of the former Berlin Wall and West of the Great Wall of China known as Eurasia. For their residency/mentorship program, Slavs and Tatars invites young artists, interdisciplinary researchers and curators from Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia to their studio and project space in Berlin. What makes Slavs and Tatars’ residency and mentorship program innovative is the unique confluence of theory and practice, discourse and production. The residency program offers young practitioners crucial exposure to both the front-house and back-house operations of a professional artist studio with global engagements. Residents participate in a collaborative environment, across different activities of Slavs and Tatars: from research to production, archiving to press.

About Deniz Kırkalı

Deniz Kırkalı is a curator and writer based between Istanbul and London. She holds an MA in Contemporary Art Theory at Goldsmiths, University of London where she is currently doing her PhD in Advanced Practices. She has co-founded topsoil, a transnational curatorial and research collective, and Garp Sessions, a summer programme in Babakale. Her writings have been published in international magazines and platforms such as AQNB, Flash Art, this is tomorrow, Cogito and Art Unlimited. She is the co-author of Otomy, published in 2022 by Onagore. Her curatorial practice focuses on collaboration, posthuman and collective curatorial models. 

Aylime Aslı Demir Hakkında

Aylime Aslı Demir is a feminist-queer activist who has been working on curatorial and editorial projects dealing with the politics and aesthetics of bringing various types of practices and knowledge together in publications and exhibitions. She has been working as the academic and cultural studies department coordinator at Kaos Gay and Lesbian Cultural Research and Solidarity Association (Kaos GL) since 2013. She is also the director of Ankara Queer Art Program – Artist Residency, which was established in 2020.  She has been taking part in many collectives collaborating with several institutions within the frames of exhibitions, conferences, community works and publications in Turkey and abroad. Recent projects she has been a part of are United Nations Religion Fellow, 2022; Un/Freedom: Art as Activism, Virtual conversation with artists across the regions 2022, Istanbul Biennial Production and Research Programme, 2021, Unpredictable Times: Queering Politics in Turkey, MUCEM, Marseille, 2019; Young Curators Academy, Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin, 2019; “At least three fingers;” still life lessons from a queer feminist activist, Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe 2019, Dislocations in Queer Art, Kara Art Studio, Kocaeli, 2019; Read My World Literature Festival, Amsterdam, 2018; Vanishing Mediator, Evliyagil Museum, Ankara, 2018; Colony, Queering the Posthuman, Schwules Museum, Berlin, 2018; Colony, Queering the Posthuman, Abud Efendi Mansion, Istanbul, 2017; Public Program of Mountain Qaf, Arter, Space for Art, 2017; Future Queer, Ark Kültür, Istanbul, 2016.

Alper Turan Hakkında

Alper Turan is a curator and researcher based in Istanbul and Berlin. Her current research and curatorial practice focus on queer strategies and methodologies which includes but not limited to collective fiction and fictional archive-building, appropriation, and anonymity. Between 2016-2018, with a curatorial collective Das Art Project, he co-curated four site-responsive exhibitions including ‘‘Genetically Modified’’ (2017) commissioned for 13th Sharjah Biennial’s off-site exhibition. In 2018, Turan curated Positive Space, an exhibition project on HIV/AIDS in Istanbul. This project also lays the ground of his cultural studies master research in Sabancı University in which she merged critical reading of artworks with (auto)ethnographic accounts. Turan co-curated HIVstories research exhibition which has been travelling around Berlin, Warsaw and Istanbul. Turan participated in International Curatorial Intensive in New Orleans (2019), ARTER Research Program, Istanbul (2019-20) and worked temporarily for Schwules Museum, Berlin (2018), Collecteurs (2019), Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg (2019). In 2020, Turan started her PhD in theory and history of arts at the College of Fine Arts in Hamburg (HFBK).