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News
A Place of Welcome: Kameron Locke’s Performance in Tarabya
On January 24 and 25, fellow Kameron Locke transformed the garden of the historic summer residence of the German Ambassador into a site of artistic creation. With Welcome, he presented a performance and installation work developed during his residency at the Tarabya Cultural Academy. Shaped by hi…
Current residents
Birsen Kahraman
Birsen Kahraman is a psychotherapist, supervisor, and author. She is also involved in psychotherapeutic training and professional policy. She studied psychology, journalism, and cultural studies at the University of Hamburg and at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. She received her doctorate in…
Elif Sözer & Zeynep Özden
Elif Sözer (born 1987 in Istanbul, Turkey) grew up in Vienna and, after studying theater, film and media studies at the University of Vienna, completed a physical theater training course after Jacques Lecoq at the London International School of Performing Arts (LISPA). She then moved to Istanbul, w…
Hêlîn Alas
Hêlîn Alas (b. 1987) is visual artist and art educator. Her multidisciplinary practice addresses the mythical and affective aspects of society’s “scripts” that promise a sense of belonging. Through assemblage, sculpture, photography, and performance, Alas creates model-like scenarios that re…
Kameron Locke
Kameron Locke is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, classically trained tenor, researcher, and educator born in Chicago and living in Hamburg. His artistic practice explores themes of sexuality, identity, patriarchy, and love within the context of Afro-diasporic and LGBTQ+ experiences. After study…
Maïssa Lihedheb
Maïssa Lihedheb, a Tunisian-German filmmaker, author, and curator, works between Germany, Tunisia, and the United States. Born and raised in Germany to Tunisian immigrants, she earned her bachelor’s degree in media and entertainment management with a thesis on “Symbolic Destruction in Mass M…
Stellan Veloce
Stellan Veloce is a Sardinian cellist and composer living in Berlin. They studied cello at the Cagliari Conservatory and composition at the Universität der Künste Berlin and the California Institute of the Arts. Veloce’s music focuses on timbral research, iteration, and modulations of sound d…
Tunay Önder
Tunay Önder is an author, curator, and artist. Her work focuses on emancipation struggles in the context of a migration society, at the intersection of text, performance, installation, and discourse. Önder studied sociology, political science, and ethnology at Bosporus University in Istanbul and H…
Residencies
The Open Call for the 2026-2027 season ended!
Until 29 December 2025, artists working in various disciplines who live and work in Germany could apply for a four- to eight-month Tarabya Residency at the Tarabya Cultural Academy in Istanbul. In addition, tandems of cultural professionals from Germany and Türkiye had the opportunity to apply for the Turkish-German Co-Production Residencies that are awarded in cooperation with the Allianz Foundation.
Projects
As We Used to Spell
As words extend faster and further into public and personal spaces than ever before, they reclaim their agency in real time, as spells. The operative power of phrases, prompts, and protests over our lives is at the center of this exhibition and research project, which explores how emergent and resid…
Istanbul Diaries
The approximately 4-hour concert installation combines sound and video installations, graphic/video scores, field recordings, ensemble conducting and small group improvisations with 7 important experimental/contemporary musicians and protagonists of Istanbul’s vibrant music scene. The result is a un…
