Istanbul–Berlin Residency Program: Open Studio with İhsan Oturmak

18:00–21:00: Open Studio
19:00–20:00: Residency artist İhsan Oturmak in conversation with Erden Kosova

İhsan Oturmak’s studio is opened on November 20 and 21 from 3–6 pm.

İhsan Oturmak has been living and working at Kunstquartier Bethanien as part of the Istanbul–Berlin Residency Program since July. In an Open Studio and in conversation with the curator and art critic Erden Kosova, Oturmak presents the results of his work.

During his residency in Berlin, Oturmak looks at coffeehouses and small businesses run by and for communities from Turkey, through the lens of trade, belonging, and power. At the center of his research-based practice are communities from Turkey with different social and ideological backgrounds, as well as the everyday relationships and encounters taking place in these spaces. Making use of observational sketches, photographs and stop-motion compositions, Oturmak explores the ways in which “Turks” living as a minority in Germany create spaces of their own through business, and how these places become spots where power relations, social hierarchies and identities are performatively reproduced. Along the way, the “Turquerie” movement of the 16th–18th centuries enters the artist’s practice, bringing attention to how Ottoman and Turkish culture was historically represented and appropriated in Europe, how motives once tied to military and political strength turned into a cultural and touristic spectacle, and how this imagery has been reappropriated by Turkish citizens.

İhsan Oturmak is a fellow of the “Istanbul–Berlin Residency Program” from July to December 2026. Born in 1987 in Diyarbakır, Oturmak received his bachelor’s degree in teaching arts and crafts from Marmara University in 2012. Oturmak was the recipient of Istanbul Culture and Arts Foundation’s (İKSV) fellowship to participate in the artist-residency program at Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, in 2013. His works have been exhibited at international institutions, most recently the Çanakkale Biennial (2022), Peter Kilchmann Gallery (2022), Odunpazarı Modern Museum (2021), and Kunstraum Innsbruck (2020). Solo presentations of his work were organized by Depo, Istanbul (2016) and Karavil Contemporary, London (2015). His most recent solo exhibition, Two-Headed, took place at Öktem Aykut in 2024.

Erden Kosova (*1972, Istanbul) was in the organisational team of Berliner Herbstsalon at Gorki between 2013 and 2026. In 2021, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the labour agreement between Turkey and Germany, he curated the exhibition Thorn Refuge at Depo Istanbul, which focused on the experience of mass migration and its socio-cultural consequences. In 2023, he co-organised the festival Gezi: Ten Years After held at Gorki, in 2025 the festival 100 + 10 — Armenian Allegories, the prologue of the 7th Berliner Herbstsalon.

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.