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.
Çınar Eslek
January 15 – June 15, 2026
From January to June 2026, Çınar Eslek is the recipient of the „Berlin Senate Istanbul-Berlin Residency“ stipend. The works of Çınar Eslek are about the possibilities of the body, as a complex existence and as a site of transformation, hybridity, and interconnectedness, examining its physical, emotional, and sociopolitical dimensions. The artist, mainly through autobiographical references, personal experiences, collective narratives, ponders on the forces of the body to exist and be exposed to action while following the traces of bodily movement. She explores themes of identity, accessibility and existence. These inquiries are deeply informed by her experiences, positioning her work within broader conversations about access, representation, and resilience. Using media such as canvas, photography, video, three-dimensional installations, and textiles, she creates uncanny image abstractions that challenge conventional norms.
During the residency in Berlin, Çınar Eslek aims to advance her interdisciplinary project “Basting Stitches,” which explores self-preservation and reimagines bodily narratives through the lens of vulnerability, difference, and resilience. Rooted in disability and accessibility studies, this project challenges societal norms tied to power and exclusion, focusing on feminist, queer, migrant, and marginalized communities She aspires to communicate that accessibility not merely as a physical adjustment but as a cultural and social practice. The project begins with research and interviews to document the experiences of disabled individuals and queer migrants in Berlin, highlighting the physical and emotional impacts of inaccessible spaces. She seeks to enrich her practice with fresh perspectives and collaborations. This residency will allow her to explore how art can foster community, amplify voices, and contribute to transformative social discourses on accessibility and the body.
In her last solo exhibition Tack, Limb, Ilizarov at DEPO, Eslek utilized stitched fabrics, found materials ( scraps she collected ), and video to create hybrid forms that explore bodily possibilities and limitations. Similarly, her contribution to Crip Magazine #5 during the 17th Istanbul Biennial addressed the intersections of disability, identity, and societal structures, challenging ableist norms while offering alternative narratives of embodiment. The artist won the “Borders and Orbits” award (2006, Siemens Art), 26th “Artists of Today” award (2008, Aksanat) and İstanbul Rotary Art Award (2011). She participated to “Cité des Arts” residency program in Paris. She has also attended renown art events in Turkey which include Çanakkale Biennial, Istanbul Biennial, Mardin International Biennial. As a participant in The Alternative Art School Platform (2022), She engaged with Nato Thompson’s “All the World’s A Stage,” exploring public art, interventionist practices, and art across difference, and Amber Eve Imrie’s “Artists on Social Media,” which examined the dynamics of digital presence.
Nejbir Erkol
July 15 – December 15, 2025
From July to December 2025, Nejbir Erkol was the recipient of the „Berlin Senate Istanbul-Berlin Residency“ stipend. In her artistic practice spanning video, installation, painting, and performance, Nejbir Erkol engages with questions of precarity, migration, identity, and collective memory. Born in Nusaybin, Mardin, in Turkey’s Southeastern Anatolia region, about 20 km north of the Syrian border and not far from Iraq, her projects often draw on her own experiences of political violence and displacement, creating spaces for reflection on how communities remember, rebuild, and narrate their histories.
Her long-term project Çukur (Hole), which she has been working on since 2019, centers around a rocket that fell just 97 steps away from her house during Turkey’s Operation Peace Spring. Launched in October 2019 in the east of the Euphrates to establish a so-called safe zone. The work confronts the dissonance between official narratives of security and the reality of living in a war zone. Through this and other repeated incidents, the people in her community are faced with urgent questions: What is a safe space? Do we have one?
During her time in Berlin, Erkol explored how art intersects with different communities, spaces, and practices to critically engage with and reshape the past. She was particularly interested in tracing the fragile imprints that war leaves on society—both in Berlin and in her home region—and in understanding how repeated experiences of violence and uprooting transform collective memory and artistic expression.
The residency also gave her the opportunity to engage with people who, like herself, have been displaced—especially those who fled the Syrian–Turkish border—to learn what it means to begin a “second life” in Germany. Her project documented these experiences and reflected on how, in conditions of freedom, stories can be told without censorship: what can be shared, and how.
By building connections with the diaspora from Mardin and the wider region, Erkol was able to create an archive of personal histories and artistic responses to displacement, identity, gender, migration, and precarity. Going forward, her work aims to continue to contribute to a broader perspective on how communities rebuild after violence and loss.
Erkol holds an MFA in Painting from Hacettepe University in Ankara, where she wrote her thesis on artistic practices addressing precarity. She has participated in numerous international exhibitions and research programs such as Flux | bell sRTUcTURs (Berlin, 2024), Festival SACRe – Gaîté Lyrique (Paris, 2023), the 5th Mardin Biennial (Mardin, 2022), and SAHA Studio (Istanbul, 2025). In 2023, she was one of the winners of the Prince Claus Seed Award. She recently opened an exhibition titled “Making a Land” at the Goethe Institute Gallery Vitrin in Ankara.
The stipend of the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion is made possible by a cooperation between neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK) and Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien in Berlin as well as DEPO in Istanbul.