Every Wednesday and Saturday between 12-7 pm.

Scroll down for event language information and calendar.

For the details of the programme:
https://www.saha.org.tr/en/studio/program

SAHA Studio is among the participants and venues of the 17th Istanbul Biennial. Open to visits on Wednesdays and Saturdays from 12 to 7 pm throughout the biennial period, SAHA Studio is designed as a space where the research and production phases of the on-going works by the residents in various media can be observed, and public events are organized.

As part of an interactive archival presentation that focuses on the five terms of the program since its launch in 2019, different media and sources – such as visual files of artists’ works and

events, project videos, supported publications, and updated portfolios of the alumni are made accessible to the visitors at SAHA Studio. Moreover, a public program during the biennial period sheds light on the practices of the participants as well as certain prominent themes in their work.

Elmas Deniz, Can Küçük, and Burcu Yağcıoğlu are working on new projects within the scope of World Weather Network, to which SAHA is a founding member, that brings artists and writers together from 28 countries as a response to the global climate crisis, whereas Istanbul Biennial participants Atıf Akın and Ahmet Öğüt & Silent University Orientation Program team propose a studio and a gathering place for the visitors in parallel to their biennial projects at Gazhane.

Visitors who can observe the projects supported and undertaken by SAHA since 2011 on Burak Arıkan’s network mapping platform, Graph Commons. Moreover, at SAHA Studio, 17th Istanbul Biennial participant, designer, and web developer Yehwan Song’s online work, Cascading Spiral, which mimics a living organism in its continual growth and invites the viewers to a dialogue with the participants, can also be experienced at SAHA Studio.

SAHA Studio Public Program

Open to visits every Wednesday and Saturday between 12-7 pm.

17 September 2022, Saturday
18.00-20.00: Studio Get-Together with Atıf Akın

24 September 2022, Saturday
15.00-16.30: World Weather Network - WWN Talks #1
İlksen Mavituna, Çelenk Bafra, Sibel Horada, Aslıhan Demirtaş

The first of the World Weather Network talk series organized at SAHA Studio in parallel to the 17th Istanbul Biennial, centers around the recent past of the contemporary art scene and possible scenarios of its future. We are living at a time when topics of ecology and climate crisis come forward as a high-priority issue in contemporary art. Works and initiatives of art that show concern for the crises the planet earth grapples with, soar in recent years, finding a context in the Anthropocene. What were the outcomes of this discernment concurrently evident in and outside of Turkey to date; what other prospects are there? Where should one look to detect the limitations of the affinity amongst art, ecology, and activism? What sorts of grounds for dialogue should we build? With the participation of Sibel Horada, Aslıhan Demirtaş, Çelenk Bafra, and İlksen Mavituna, this panel addresses the context of activism that affiliates art with ecological crises, the actors of this contexture, and the new positions that the response to the crisis would entail.

1 October 2022, Saturday
15.00-16.30: On Residencies: Delfina Foundation*
Aaron Cezar, Sena Başöz, Dicle Beştaş

Delfina Foundation aims to foster creative practices and new dialogues internationally through the residency programs, exhibitions, and public programs run in London since 2007. As part of the collaboration with the Delfina Foundation since 2013, SAHA supports the participation of researchers, artists, and curators from Turkey to these programs in London. The founding director of the Delfina Foundation, Aaron Cezar meets the audience in Istanbul, where he comes for the SAHA Advisory Board meeting, and tells about the foundation's programs and objectives that evolved over the years. In this framework, artist Sena Başöz who developed a performance project in collaboration with Delfina Foundation in London where she was a resident twice between 2020-2022 and Dicle Beştaş who was invited to Delfina's curatorial program this summer as the programmer of Loading in Diyarbakır speak of their projects and experiences.

8 October 2022, Saturday
15.00-16.30: WWN Talks #2
Merve Akar Akgün, Merve Ünsal, Özge Ersoy (online participation)

The conversation between the editors of Art Unlimited and m-est.org will take as a point of departure the series of texts that m-est.org has been working on with the invitation of SAHA as part of the World Weather Network. With the artist texts published as part of the series, m-est.org focuses on artistic production that deals with weather forecasts and the high and low pressures of the cities we live and produce in. The discussion will focus on transformation, crisis, and fabulations of futures at the intersection of publishing and visual arts.

17.00-18.30: WWN Talks #3
Elmas Deniz

One of the artists of SAHA Studio's June-December 2022 term, Elmas Deniz’s concept-driven works explore the intersections and points of entanglement between economics and nature. At the third part of the WWN Talks series, Deniz sheds light on her artistic practice by focusing on the human-nature relationship, how the idea of nature is shaped by different value systems throughout history, and today's ecological concerns.

15 October 2022, Saturday
15.00-16.30: WWN Talks #4
Can Küçük

In his performative presentation taking place at SAHA Studio on October 15th, Can Küçük follows a personal narrative, detailing the physical and social relationships he forms with the atmosphere of his current location. The narrative which he divides into chapters with reference to the basic elements of life, is accompanied by Hatice Yüksel's music.

22 October 2022, Saturday
15.00-16.30: WWN Talks #5
Burcu Yağcıoğlu

In her talk organized as part of the WWN Talk series, Burcu Yağcıoğlu maps the act of stopping and the concept of inertia from different perspectives, and addresses it as an alternative to doing, to motion and change. Presenting her research that spans from the history of laziness to biothermodynamics, thus life's most essential interrelation with stopping and enthropy with images, Yağcıoğlu concludes her artist talk with an analysis of Ursula le Guin's "Lathe of Heaven" from 1971 in terms of the climate crisis and context of motion/stopping.

29 October 2022, Saturday
15.00-16.00: Silent University Orientation Program Gathering*

The Silent University is a solidarity-based knowledge exchange platform by displaced people and forced migrants. In this event, Ahmet Öğüt as the initiator of the Silent University, Yelta Köm as the coordinator of the Silent University Orientation Program, Suha Nabhan and Amal Jinril as the co-founders of Migration Jam and members of the platform present in detail the motivation behind the Silent University, its values, their projects as presented at SAHA Studio in parallel to the 17th Istanbul Biennial, the stories of previous and current branches and beyond.

2 November 2022, Wednesday
15.00-18.00: Ethics of Collecting

5 November 2022, Saturday
15.00-18.00: Academia
İbrahim Cansızoğlu, Kerem Ozan Bayraktar, Borga Kantürk, Yasemin Nur

Centering on "academia" as both an institution and a concept, the panel event departs from the "Ways of Learning" topic that is brought forward by the 17th Istanbul Biennial as a global issue; it underlines the academia as a phenomenon within the contemporary art milieu based on the fact that a good number of SAHA Studio participants also have academic roles aside from their artistic practices respectively.

In that context, with İbrahim Cansızoğlu as the moderator and SAHA Studio alumni Yasemin Nur, Borga Kantürk, and Kerem Ozan Bayraktar as speakers, the panel aims to discuss the balance, transitivity, conflict, and other dynamics between these two fields.

12 November 2022, Saturday
15.00-16.30: On Residencies: Artworks*
Eirini Fountedaki

As part of SAHA's collaboration with the Athens-based ARTWORKS, the second ARTWORKS fellow in residence at SAHA Studio, Eirini Fountedaki shares the outcomes of her research conducted in Istanbul during October-November 2022 period as well as her experiences as a curator at the residency programs in these two cities.

19 November 2022, Saturday
12.00-19.00: SAHA Studio Open

Atıf Akın, Elmas Deniz, Can Küçük, Burcu Yağcıoğlu, and Ahmet Öğüt & Silent University Team (Amal Jibril, Suha Nabhan, Yelta Köm), who have been conducting their research and production at SAHA Studio since June 2022, will meet the audience with their final presentations.
* Event is held in English