neue Gesellschaft
für bildende Kunst

Artist Talk with Özge Açıkkol moderated by Ingo Arend
Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Studio 139

The Istanbul-based artist Özge Açıkkol has been living and working at Kunstquartier Bethanien since January 15, 2023 as a fellow of the Berlin Senate and the nGbK. As part of the Istanbul-based artist collective Oda Projesi, Açıkkol works at the intersection of art, socio-spatial practices, literature, and social pedagogy.

Açıkkol is primarily interested in the city and how it reproduces itself through the micro-actions and interactions of its inhabitants. These micro-actions of reproducing the urban environment usually emerge from the survival tactics of citizens facing various levels of urban poverty. Her recent research is on new trajectories of art and activism relationship in the urban sphere. She will do a series of interviews with different actors, to produce new knowledge of the public space as commons, during her residency in Berlin. In today’s world the notion of the “right to the city” is suppressed by authoritarian regimes and practices, hence “haunting” the public space by talking about it, might be a way out.”

Özge Açıkkol (b. 1976) studied fine arts and painting at Marmara University in Istanbul. Recently she participated in Reflections From The Women's Archives exhibition, Depo İstanbul, 2022 and she took part in BAK’s (basis voor actuele kunst) Fellowship for Situated Practice between September 2021 – June 2022. She participated in numerous collaborations and projects at home and abroad as a member of the artist collective Oda Projesi. In autumn 2022, the project ANA#3, in which the artists deal with motherhood, was presented at the 17th Istanbul Biennial.

Ingo Arend is a cultural journalist and essayist for visual arts, literature, and cultural policy. His special fields of interest are art and history, art and politics, and arts, culture, and history in Turkey and the Menasa-region. From 1996 to 2010 he was editor of the German weekly der freitag (Editor in Chief and head of the cultural department from 2007-09). Since 2012 he has been the arts writer for taz - die tageszeitung and Deutschlandradio Kultur. Between 2015-2023, Arend was board member of the neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK), Berlin.

The stipend of the Senate Department for Culture and Europe 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.