Istanbul-Berlin Residency Program

Since 2018, two scholarships have been granted annually to artists who live in Istanbul. The existing Istanbul stipend of the Senate Department for Culture and Europe was expanded to 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.
The scholarship takes place as part of a cooperation between the neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK) and ZK/U (from 2018 to mid 2021), from June of 2021 on with Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien in Berlin, and DEPO in Istanbul.

rezzan gümgüm

July 15 – December 15, 2024

From July to December 2024, rezzan gümgüm will be the recipient of the „Berlin Senate Istanbul-Berlin Residency“ stipend. Her 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.

Ece Eldek

January 15 – June 15, 2024

The visual artist and poet Ece Eldek works with video, photography, performance, installation and poetry. Eldek‘s artistic work focuses on networks of social, political and cultural relationships, and on interwoven mechanisms and processes. Based on the idea that subjective experience is reshaped and generated by the environment, the memory and by the socio-political space, she positions herself as an artist in various networks of relationships and explores them from the inside.

Between 2005 and 2009, she studied Fine Arts and Graphic Design at Marmara University in Istanbul. She is one of the founding members of the art initiatives TOZ Artist Run Space and Her Hal in Istanbul and is co-founder and editor of the online magazine Moero, founded in 2020, which contributes to the visibility of women in the poetry scene. She has shown her artistic work in numerous international exhibitions and biennials, including most recently at the Istanbul Biennial, SALT Galata Istanbul and the Piccadilly International Art Museum in Seoul, South Korea.

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.