We are happy to welcome Barış Seyitvan as AR-Resident at Suomenlinna in Helsinki. Barış is a curator and artist with extensive experience of research into conflict and displacement in relation to contemporary art and the conditions of the art worker across the Middle East.

Barış Seyitvan (1982) is a Turkish-born artist and curator based in Diyarbakir, southeastern Turkey, working around the themes of contemporary art and migration, conflict, imprisonment and torture, nomadism, and exile. Graduating in 2004 in Fine Arts Education at Dicle University, Seyitvan went on to complete a Masters in Artuklu University in 2017, while continuing his curatorial and artistic practice in Turkey and the EU. From 2009-2017 Seytivan was curator at the Amed Art Gallery and Municipality Art Gallery, Diyarbakır-Turkey, where he promoted enquiry through contemporary art within a local context. In 2017 he coordinated the joint project of NBK and ASA (Autonomous Space Agency) in Berlin, which offered grants and assistance to artists’ collectives and associations from the wider Mesopotamia region to run contemporary spaces in at-risk areas. He was also co-coordinator of the Istanbul art fair in 2017 and has curated exhibitions in Galerie Hinterland, Vienna and Zurich.

As an artist in his own right, Seyitvan strives to make visible the realities that reach the west only as distant stories via a variety of media, including drawing, photography, installation, performance and  video. In 2016 he exhibited a digital print in the exhibition  Beyond Boundaries: Art by Email, comprised of works by artists who could not travel due to EU visa restrictions. Seyitvan has exhibited in the UK ,Switzerland, Poland, Holland and France.

 

Some works by Barış Seyitvan

 

 

 

Barış Seyitvan is an Artists-at-Risk (AR) Resident hosted in cooperation with HIAP on the island of Suomenlinna at AR-Safe Haven Helsinki. The AR-Network is curated by Perpetuum Mobile (PM) and is coordinated by the AR-Secretariat, co-funded by Kone Foundation. This residency is funded by the Division of Culture and Leisure of the City of Helsinki.