The artist rezzan gümgüm has taken up the Istanbul-Berlin scholarship from the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion. Until December 2024, gümgüm will live and work in a studio in Kunstquartier Bethanien.

For the seventh time, two female visual artists from Turkey have been selected for a five-month residency in Berlin as part of the Istanbul-Berlin Scholarship initiated by the neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK) in 2018. In a two-stage selection process, the jury of the art venue DEPOT in Istanbul (Evrim Kavcar, Marina Papazyan, Mert Sarısu, Rojda Tuğrul and Aylin Vartanyan) compiled a shortlist of ten artists from over 120 applications. The jury of the nGbK in Berlin (Stèphane Bauer, Nuray Demir and Barış Seyitvan) made the final selection. In addition to rezzan gümgüm, the jury chose documentary photographer Serpil Polat, who will begin her fellowship in January 2025.

About rezzan gümgüm

rezzan gümgüm’s artistic practice spans various mediums including performance, video, installation, photography, and embroidery on fabric. Within her diverse body of work, she explores themes such as identity, gender, war, conflicts, forced displacement, and biodiversity, all within the broader contexts of ecology, politics, and society. Through her art, she delves into both personal and collective experiences within the structured routines of everyday life. She is a founding member of the Rê collective, an art group with a critical focus on the Mesopotamian region, that utilizes public spaces as platforms for artistic expression, aiming to create inclusive art accessible to all.

In Berlin, gümgüm intends to further develop her ongoing project titled Goat on the Mountain, Moon in the Sky, Fish in the Water, which examines cultural and biological diversity, as well as daily life in Dersim, where nature and local culture intertwine. Her work prompts a reconsideration of humanity’s epistemological connection to the natural world, particularly timely as global biodiversity faces imminent threats.

During her residency, gümgüm plans to engage with individuals across generations whose families were forcibly displaced from the Dersim region to Berlin, as well as with NGOs addressing issues faced by immigrant women in the city.

Between 2007 and 2020, gümgüm studied art at Hacettepe University in Ankara, at Madrid Complutense University, at Gazi University in Ankara and at Macerata Accademia di Belli Arti, Macerata, Italy. Her works and performances have been shown in solo and group exhibitions in Turkey and abroad, among the most recent as part of the video screening Antiwarcoalition.art at ZKM, Karlsruhe.

About the Istanbul-Berlin Residency Program

Since 2018, two scholarships have been granted annually to artists who live in Istanbul. The scholarship program of the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion promotes cultural exchange and supports the artistic development of professional artists as part of the active city partnerships between Berlin and Istanbul and to strengthen ties with the current Turkish art scene.

The existing Istanbul stipend from the former Senate Department for Culture and Europe was expanded in 2018 on the initiative of the neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK) into a true exchange, with a jury annually selecting two artists from Istanbul to be sent to Berlin and vice versa. The aim is to further enhance the relations between the partner cities of Berlin and Istanbul as well as the connections to the Turkish art scene. This is done with the conviction that international exchange and direct communication allow cultural diversity be experienced as an enrichment, inviting people to a change in perspective.

Further Information on the Istanbul-Berlin Residency Program is available here.

The stipend of the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion is made possible in the frame of a cooperation between the neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK) and the Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien in Berlin as well as DEPO in Istanbul.