Özge Açıkkol

artist

Özge Açıkkol is an artist and a member of Oda Projesi collective. Working at the intersection of art, socio-spatial practices, literature, and social pedagogy, she is a collector of situational usages of İstanbul’s public spaces, using photographic and narrative documentation.

Since 2013, with Oda Projesi she questions the transformation capacity of the artist-mother subject through a series of meetings with women precariously working in the cultural field. Hence, she is interested in reclaiming the fundamental and invisible act of “caring” as a support structure in the public sphere, beyond its trapped interpretations in the private realm. Her research within the BAK Fellowship focuses on the urgency of reclaiming public space as part of a culture of “living together” in the context of authoritarian attitudes and agoraphobia. The research asks: how can artists establish organic relations with social movements and develop “spectral tools” facilitating new socialities? Recently she participated in In the Blink of a Bird, nGbK, Berlin, 2019; First Marriage, Riverrun: Bunker Exhibitions, İstanbul, 2019; “Edit Your Future”, 8th Bucharest Biennale, Bucharest, 2018. And with Oda Projesi (with Güneş Savaş and Seçil Yersel), they took part in On Fail[e]d Tales and Ta[y]lors, Tabakalera, San Sebastian, 2020; Mobile Autonomy “Organizing Ourselves as Artists Today”, Middelheimmuseum, Antwerp, 2015; ANA, Astrid Noack’s Atelier, Copenhagen, 2013; Beyond Belonging, Ballhaus Naunynstrasse, Berlin, 2009; Collective Creativity, Kunsthalle Friedericianum, Kassel, 2005; İstanbul, 9th Istanbul Biennale, İstanbul, 2005; Structures of Survival, 50th Venice Biennale, Venice, 2003. She lives and works in Istanbul and is part of the Istanbul Bienali Research and Production Program, Istanbul, in the Fellowship for Situated Practice.