Past Residents

Liz Cooper is a researcher and social sciences librarian exploring traditional knowledge and cultural practices. Her work focuses on herbal knowledge, its transmission across generations, and how communities preserve and rebuild it.

Marta Simeón is a multidisciplinary Spanish visual artist specialising in contemporary engraving, while also working with papermaking, ceramics and educational art practices. Her series Akan Canavarlar explores the hidden and contradictory sides of human nature through playful and symbolic monsters. During her ArtHere residency, she incorporated the traditional Turkish Ebru technique into her ongoing research.

Aaron Guice is a US-based sound designer exploring the relationship between architecture and sound. During his residency, he investigates Istanbul’s acoustic environments and develops new forms of sound art inspired by the city.

Wen-Hsi Harman is a Taiwanese ceramic artist based in the UK. Working primarily with porcelain, her practice explores cross-cultural identity and the space between Eastern and Western cultures through handmade ceramic works.

Lou Lim is a licensed mental health counselor and expressive arts therapist. His practice uses art, music, movement, creative writing, and performance to support emotional wellbeing and help communities process difficult experiences.

Rosie Hastie is an artist whose photographic work transforms familiar landscapes into carefully constructed illusions. Using materials such as paper, vape and household lighting, she questions the perceived truth of photographic images. Her practice also expands into immersive installation, exploring ideas of space, memory, place and displacement.

Nara Walker is an Australian-born multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores the human condition through painting, drawing, performance, video, photography, writing and sound. Her recent work engages with vulnerability, trauma, mythology, freedom and courage. Her process moves between chaos and order, connecting ideas of identity, philosophy and social structures.

In 2014 he was awarded The Bristol First Collective who purchased his sculpture Juxtaposed at the 161st Annual Open Exhibition at the Royal West of England Academy UK.

Cory explores stories, language, and cultural knowledge through oral traditions and poetics. His practice questions the impact of technology on language and communities, advocating for human-centered and non-hegemonic forms of knowledge.

The artist works across digital and analogue video and photography, exploring identity, diaspora, and estrangement. Her practice also examines the experiences of Arab women, focusing on displacement, isolation, and the effects of patriarchal societies.

Gulsah AYLA Bayrak is a multidisciplinary artist based in Belgium. She grew up in both the Turkish and western cultures.

Jack Beattie is a musician and producer exploring experimental rhythms and alternative tuning. During his ArtHere residency, he collaborated with Syrian and Turkish musicians to develop an album inspired by cross-cultural exchange.

A Colombian artist based in Bogotá, she works primarily with experimental and documentary video and video installations. Her practice explores stillness, time, and subtle movement, while her writing experiments with non-linear narratives and memory. Her recent projects bring visual and written language together.

Léa Roch is a French visual artist whose practice moves between installation, sculpture, video, photography and painting. Her research examines systems of understanding and approaches to seriousness through playful and experimental forms. She is also the founder of the artist-run space IVECO NU near Paris.

Nikos Dervisis is a musician, artist and graphic designer working between London, Istanbul and Athens. His multidisciplinary practice explores cultural connections, overlaps and traces of multiculturalism across the Balkans and Middle East. During his ArtHere residency, he created a 30-page artist book titled Downloads Folder Rearrangement.

The artist combines photography, collage, and abstract monotypes to explore overlooked moments and everyday life. Their Istanbul work brings together subtle observations of the city, from street scenes and architecture to people, objects, and traces of time.

Nelli Szabó is a contemporary artist and designer whose practice moves between visual art and industrial design. She works with objects, collections, installations and socially engaged projects, exploring the relationships between materials, narratives and different forms of reality. Her ArtHere residency brought her research into dialogue with Istanbul's architecture and design culture.

Gavin Kew is a South African-born artist based in New Zealand whose practice centres on ceramics and printmaking. His work is strongly influenced by travel, place, cultural exchange and experimentation with materials. Through clay and print, he explores the textures of experience and the stories embedded within materials and different communities.

Emmanuel Moysan is a French musician and sound artist working under the name Aarp. His practice explores sonic textures, space and the transformation of different musical genres. During his ArtHere residency, he used electronic tools including Max/MSP and Pure Data to investigate new sonic possibilities and develop connections with the sound-art community in Istanbul.

Waard Ward is a Toronto-based contemporary arts collective combining floristry, community gardening, and social practice. Their work focuses on community building, mutual aid, and supporting newcomers through collaborative creative projects.

Jarmo Pikkujamsa is a Finnish writer and photographer interested in borders, identity and the ways people and cultures exist across geographical and temporal boundaries. His work often combines photography and text to create minimalist, fictional interpretations of forgotten histories. During his ArtHere residency, he worked on a novel centred on Istanbul and the role of songs in preserving memory.

Zed Hopkins is an Australian multidisciplinary artist working across performance, digital and physical media. His practice explores how ideas of weirdness emerge within individuals and societies, often creating immersive experiences that challenge audiences. His ArtHere residency formed part of a wider research project examining the intersections between spiritual and creative practices across cultures.

Chris Bury is an Australian emerging artist and arts worker whose paintings investigate psychological relationships between people and their environments. His work focuses particularly on ideas of disassociation, solitude and isolation. He completed his Fine Arts degree at the University of Tasmania and has also participated in international artist residencies.

The artist works across feminist activism, popular education, and ecosystem conservation. Through collaborative art practices, she addresses gender violence, environmental exploitation, and systems of oppression, creating spaces for resistance and collective action.

The artist explores language, sound, culture, and power through sonic interventions and installations. Their recent work examines speech patterns, soundscapes, and collective human behavior, questioning how meaning is shaped through language and social interaction.

The artist explores consumerism and environmental destruction by transforming recycled and industrial waste into thought-provoking artworks.

Hazem Waked was a Turkey-based artist selected for ArtHere Istanbul’s Artists Connecting in Transition (ACT) programme, supporting artists affected by displacement through artistic exchange and development.

Jehsong Baak is a South Korean-born photographer based in Paris. His photographic practice explores people, everyday life, and moments of intimacy through a distinctive black-and-white aesthetic. His work has been exhibited internationally and is held in major public and private collections. During his ArtHere Istanbul residency, he developed a body of work inspired by the city.

Amin Rehman is a Pakistani-born multidisciplinary visual artist whose career spans several decades and more than 100 exhibitions internationally. His practice combines different visual media with an interest in social and political realities. During his ArtHere residency, he developed Melting Borders, a project documenting communities and stories connected to migration and displacement around Turkey's borders.

Abel Korinsky is a Berlin-based artist working with his twin brother Carlo as the collective Korinsky. Their practice combines sound, light, movement, and technology to create immersive, site-specific installations and transform familiar spaces and objects into new sensory experiences.

Yizhen Shen is a Shanghai-based painter whose playful and surreal works explore transformation, sensuality, and queer visual culture through eccentric forms, vibrant colors, and humor.

Marion Bretagne is a French multidisciplinary artist and illustrator working between art and graphic design. Her colorful, playful illustrations capture everyday life, inspired by her observations of Istanbul’s food culture and vibrant atmosphere.

Martin Harman is a multimedia artist working across contemporary ceramic sculpture and painting. His practice explores spirituality, reality, time, space, and the human experience, drawing inspiration from ancient sites such as Stonehenge.

The artist creates installations using local materials and narratives to explore home, identity, migration, and memory. At ArtHere Istanbul, their work incorporates Turkish crafts and materials to explore belonging and cultural heritage.

Ashton Reeder is a computational designer exploring technology, geopolitics, and environmental impact. Through 3D modeling and data visualization, his work examines global supply chains, environmental issues, and social injustices.

Laura Ortego is an Argentine photographer whose practice explores memory, family, objects and personal histories. Her projects often use photographs of meaningful objects to connect individual stories with place and identity. During her ArtHere residency, she developed a project with local women in Istanbul, inviting them to select personal objects and share the stories connected to them.

Barbara Tong is a UK-based multidisciplinary artist exploring the relationship between people, objects, and spaces. Working across different media, her practice responds to the environments around her. Her Istanbul project features a series of small ceramic pieces inspired by the city’s architecture and objects.

Boris Granche is a multidisciplinary artist working between sculpture, photography, and installation. His practice explores environmental issues, architectural degradation, obsolescence, and the relationship between architecture and the living. He works with diverse materials including plastic, water, air, and both natural and artificial plants.

A Pakistani contemporary miniature painter, she combines traditional Mughal painting techniques with experimental media. Her work explores gender inequality, female identity, and oppressive social traditions, often incorporating mixed media and fabric.

Eva van Aken (°1998, Lommel) is a visual artist who is dedicated to documentary photography and moving images.

Levent Pinarci explores human-machine relationships, digital media, identity, and virtuality through multimedia and performance. During his ArtHere residency, he explored Istanbul through video and text, reflecting on personal and family connections to the city.

Ammar Alhamidi was a Turkey-based artist selected for ArtHere Istanbul’s Artists Connecting in Transition (ACT) programme, which supports artists affected by displacement and connects them with international artistic networks.

Teresa Currea is a Colombian visual artist whose delicate works combine drawing, ink, watercolor and carefully cut paper. Her compositions create miniature, multidimensional worlds that sit between drawing, sculpture and book arts. Her practice also extends into etching, engraving and ceramics. During her ArtHere residency, she also led a book-binding workshop.

Olivier Schuppisser is a Swiss artist working primarily in oil painting. His practice combines contemporary art concepts with traditional painting techniques, exploring relationships between figures, space, scale, texture, and the viewer. His work aims to create striking, luminous compositions that capture attention and evoke a sense of wonder.

Lauren O'Connor is a self-taught film photographer and co-founder of Low Light Darkroom, an affordable collective darkroom in Oakland. Her photographic practice examines people and their surroundings, often through documentary and socially engaged approaches. During her 2017 ArtHere residency, she explored Istanbul's different socioeconomic communities.