End of 9th Term at SAHA Studio
SAHA Studio is presenting the new works of Mert Acar, Mathilde Melek An, Nejbir Erkol, Merve Tuna, and Sevil Tunaboylu—artists selected through its open call for the January–June 2025 term—between 25–28 June 2025 at its program space located in İMÇ.
Participating from Istanbul, Ankara, and Mardin, the five artists shared their practices and received feedback on their projects during their six-month residency through visits by 18 art professionals from Turkey and abroad. Within the scope of SAHA’s Curatorial Program, the artists also held regular meetings for two months with Érica Burini, guest curator from Brazil in collaboration with YBYTU, exchanging knowledge and contributing to the curator’s research process. Following their midterm presentations held on 14–15 March 2025, during which they shared their research and early production stages with the public, the artists visited the 16th Sharjah Biennial in May as an extension of the program. ,
SAHA Studio Open, taking place at the Studio’s venue in Block 5 of the Istanbul Manifaturacılar Çarşısı (İMÇ), opens on Wednesday, 25 June at 3 pm. Throughout the program, the exhibition will be accompanied by talks and events focusing on the artists’ production processes. For more information, please visit SAHA’s website and social media accounts.
Wednesday, 25 June
15:00 – 19:00: General Visits
18:00 – 19:00: Merve Tuna &, Meral Erten | Talk
Thursday, 26 June
12:00 – 19:00: General Visits
14:00 – 15:00: Guided Tour with Artists
18:00 – 19:00: Mathilde Melek An &, Sevil Tunaboylu | Talk
Friday, 27 June
12:00 – 19:00: General Visits
16:00 – 17:00: Mert Acar &, Erdem Varol | Talk
18:00 – 19:00: Nejbir Erkol &, Eylem Ejder | Talk
Saturday, 28 June
12:00 – 19:00: General Visits
14:00 – 15:00: Guided Tour with Artists
Mert Acar traces a route formed by abandoned or incomplete constructions in peripheral areas of Istanbul, inviting the viewer to reflect on urban memory. Questioning the sufficiency of photography as a medium, Acar presents a semi-fictional book developed through writing, a new element in his practice shaped at SAHA Studio. His installation also includes prints and sculptural elements that convey a sense of temporary landscape within the studio space.
Mathilde Melek An’s ongoing research Geçmiş Gelişim focuses on the archive of her family, who worked in IMC’s Block 4 in the early 2000s. Returning to this space two decades later through SAHA Studio, An revisits photos, documents, and videos from her personal archive. The archival materials, presented through various spatial forms, create a new narrative around memory, transmission, and presence.
Starting from the concept of “malfunction,” Nejbir Erkol explores its relationship with “border,” based on her personal experiences. Her installation I’ve made a mistake and yet I made something is a reflection on her 2024 deportation incident between Germany and Poland. Through landscapes of border regions, Erkol creates an introspective space merging similar past experiences and emphasizing subjectivity.
Merve Tuna continues her project The Fleeting Subject, which she has been working on since 2022. Conceptualizing loss and the void it creates as opposites of the body, Tuna integrates psychoanalysis and mathematics into sculptural forms to express this void. Her current phase at SAHA Studio moves from a single reconciled body to fragmented and manipulated body parts that coexist yet do not complete each other, forming a corporeal impression that attempts to exist with the void.
Sevil Tunaboylu questions how migration and the craft transmitted through it can be contextualized, drawing on her family archive. Following a research trip to Skopje to work more deeply on this archive, she is developing a publication that combines fictional storytelling. The draft version is accompanied by oil paintings, wall interventions, and sculptures presented in the studio.