Seda Yıldız

I am a curator with an artistic practice, with a background in art, design and literature. My interdisciplinary work spans curating, publishing, writing, and editing.

My socially engaged practice focuses on collaborative processes, self-organisation strategies, artists’ archives, and self-historicisation, as well as site-context specific curatorial projects in public space. My current PhD artistic research project, Curating as Echoing: Disclosing Collaborative Socially Engaged Art Practice, explores whether collaborative, socially engaged art practices can be presented, mediated, and circulated by remaining closely attuned to the practices themselves.

I did not grow up in an environment where art was part of everyday life. As the first person in my family to pursue higher education, my work is shaped by a commitment to examining the relationship between art and politics, and to making art accessible to broader publics. Building long-term relationships, continuity and friendships is central to my practice. These relationships can take many forms, such as a roller disco weekend, a pop-up choir performance, a podcast, a multilingual public library campaign, or a multivocal audio walk.

Since 2019, I have collaborated with the Škart artist collective (Belgrade), and since 2022 with Oda Projesi (Istanbul), working with their self-built archives. I am the editor and co-author of Building Human Relations Through Art: Škart, from 1990 to Present (Onomatopee, 2022), which traces the collective’s artistic explorations shaped by self-organisation.

Recent projects include Walking Archive: A Practice of Neighbouring (audio walk and picnic, Galata, Istanbul, 2025); SOFT Critique (exhibition and publication, ŠKUC, Ljubljana, 2023); What Knows What, What Is What? (public programme, Salt, Istanbul, 2023); Well Beings in Times of Climate Anxiety (public programme, Museum of Art and Design, Hamburg, 2023); Radio Otherwise (podcast, Manifesta 14, Prishtina, 2022); Unfixed Place, Ambiguous Time (performative exhibition, Prishtina, 2022); Open Library (community project, Municipal Library of Tavros, Athens, 2021); Memory of Kundura: The World Within a Factory (archive exhibition, Beykoz Kundura, Istanbul, 2021).

Curating as Echoing: Disclosing Collaborative Socially Engaged Art Practice

I’m curious if there might be a way to present, mediate and circulate collaborative socially engaged art by staying close to the practice itself. Experimenting with curatorial methods grounded in proximity to the work, I seek to amplify the operational logics of the artistic practices I work with by applying their social and collective making principles when the work is given public space.

In this 15-minute presentation, I will reflect on a collaborative curatorial approach developed through my involvement in the collective making processes with Oda Projesi, an artist collective based in Istanbul since 2000. Recalling their multi-relational and situated practice in the Galata neighbourhood between 2000 and 2005 through an audio-walk and picnic, Walking Archive: A Practice of Neighbouring (2025), I explore proximity, echo, and co-creation as curatorial methods aligned with the collective’s operational logics. The narrative of the audio-walk was collectively written by local neighbours, Oda Projesi, and myself, enabling co-creators to take an active role in the processes of presentation and mediation. I ask whether such a repositioning of co-creators can alter how socially engaged art is encountered and understood, allowing for a more nuanced awareness of the work’s relational dynamics and situated context, while effectively communicating its working process.