Dicle Beştaş (links): Murat Arda Uğurlu Didem Yazıcı (rechts): Sebastian Heck

Dicle Beştaş & Didem Yazıcı

Dicle Beştaş works as an architect, independent curator and program coordinator of Loading, an independent art space based in Diyarbakır. Her curatorial work is inspired by collective and discursive processes as well as paracuratorial activities. One of her main interests is questioning and researching the possibilities of exhibition making in alternative public spaces. Recently she curated the exhibition Together and Solo accompanied by Diyarbakır Peşrevi (2019) together with Misal Adnan Yıldız. She also curated Second Edition accompanied by Diyarbekiri Hokin (2020) from A4 Diyarbakır to Depo Istanbul in a new installation with Yıldız. The same year, she curated the group exhibition and public programmes Collective Works (2020) in A4 Open Art Space in Diyarbakır. The most recent exhibition she has curated is titled Scraping the Crust (2021) in Loading Art Space,  which questions the claim of function as evidence of photography, which documents the violence and its ecological impact. She gave a public presentation about the para-curatorial approach, institutions, and hacking traditional means of communication, as part of the symposium programme of the 6th Ural Biennial. Currently she is working with curator Başak Şenova on an exhibition focusing on the archival studies that will take place in 2022.

Didem Yazıcı is a curator, art historian and writer. She hails from Izmir, has studied in Istanbul and Frankfurt, and is currently based in Karlsruhe. Her curatorial work is inspired by thinking across disciplines in and outside of art, engaging social and political dynamics, and potentiality of exhibitions as socio-poetic spaces. She worked and curated exhibitions in art institutions such as Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe in 2017-18, the 11th Shanghai Biennale in 2016, Museum für Neue Kunst, Freiburg in 2015-16, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart in 2014 and organized public programmes for dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel in 2012-13 and the 2nd Edition of Project Biennial D-0 ARK Underground, Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2013. She was Curator-in-residence at the Goethe-Institut Cairo in 2016, and took part in the Curatorial Workshops by the ICI in New York and A-Desk Barcelona in 2013. She completed her M.A in Curatorial and Critical Studies at the Städelschule and Goethe University Frankfurt and B.A in Art History at Mimar Sinan University Istanbul. Recent exhibitions includes Life, Death, Love and Justice (Tranzit, Bratislava, 2021), Unconquered Spirits (Sumac Space, 2020) and Born In The Purple: Viron Erol Vert (Kunstraum Kreuzberg Bethanien Berlin, 2017).

As a tandem of the German-Turkish co-production grants Dicle Beştaş and Didem Yazıcı were residents at the Tarabya Cultural Academy from Feburary to May 2022 and again in August 2022.