Midterm Gathering at SAHA Studio

Artists Eda Gecikmez, Yekateryna Grygorenko, Zeynep Gürler, Elif Öner and Furkan Öztekin, who are participating in the 11^th term of SAHA Studio between January–June 2026, are sharing their ongoing productions with visitors at the mid-term gathering held on March 27 – 28.

The five artists selected among the 116 applications submitted to the open call for the 11^th 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.

Focusing on the city and modes of urban existence, Eda Gecikmez is working on two interrelated projects within the scope of SAHA Studio. While compiling the archive of the Kırmızı Kart (Red Card) group, which was active between 2011 and 2015, she simultaneously examines sites of resistance within the city through everyday gestures and images. Throughout the program, she aims to develop an installation that will materialize these sites within the studio space. Working on the concepts of cultural belonging and identity, Yekateryna Grygorenko places her own personal history at the center of her project as a Ukrainian artist living in Turkey. Through the bureaucratic processes of border and migration policies that document and regulate her life, she transforms her lived experience into a real-time archive and performance record during her time at SAHA Studio. Continuing her research on Lake Efteni since 2022, Zeynep Gürler focuses on the relationship between ecology and memory through the walking routes and documentation carried around the lake. Approaching the lake as a carrier of memory, she plans to present the project in the studio space as an installation combining video and weaving works. Focusing on transitions between the traditional and the contemporary in her practice, Elif Öner examines the historical layers and interrupted memory of the Unkapanı and İMÇ area in her ongoing research. Focusing on the relationship between traditional shadow theatre, the motifs carved into Ottoman tombstones, and the textile motifs found in İMÇ, Öner processes the traces left behind by urban transformation, demolition, and the changing nature of the site and places traditional shadow theatre at the core of her research while conceptualizing the making process of shadow puppets (tasvir). Working on the concepts of recurrence and repetition Furkan Öztekin’s project at SAHA Studio is grounded on the archive of activist and artist Ceyhan Fırat, with whom he collaborated between 2019 and 2021. Öztekin explores the possibilities of “returning and existing” through various media, approaching the archive not as a system of documentation but as a mode of expression.

As of the end of March, having completed the first half of the term, the 11^th term artists will present the new works they have realized in their studios at İMÇ to visitors in June, accompanied by parallel events. In addition, the program, whose open call for the 12^th term will be announced at the end of March, aims to reveal its new participants during the final SAHA Studio Open taking place in June.

SAHA Studio Midterm Gathering 
Friday, 27 March           : 3pm – 7pm
Saturday, 28 March       : 12pm – 7pm