Arthere

18/08/2026

welcome our new artist in residence Anh Tran, Anh is a Vietnamese-American (from California) traveling artist and Licensed Art Psychotherapist. Anh continues to grow curious of the psychological inner workings and deeper layers of the unconscious that shapes creative expression both intergenerationally and systematically. Aware of how the intersections of these invisible threads affect one’s cultural identity, Anh is spending time at the artist residency to explore these very intersections within herself while collecting interviews from other artists around the world for a separate project. This project’s purpose will allow further amplification of the unique perspectives of artists on an international scale while highlighting common elements of our shared humanity through creative expression. Anh is drawn to watercolor and ink art media as it allows for deeper freedom of artistic expression with bold elements.

14/07/2026

Welcome our new resident Jack Nelson, about his practice: My work explores themes of memory, travel, and the connections formed along the way. The work captures the intertwining of time, place, and experience, showcasing my personal travels and cultural encounters. Each photograph layers multiple images taken on the same day, creating a visual record that mimics the flow of thoughts and moments. My technique reveals the in-between spaces, or elements that “would otherwise be lost in a normal image.”. I describe my work as a fusion of photography, sculpture, and jewelry-making, aiming to evoke an unexplainable atmosphere. My multicultural upbringing in Mozambique, Oman, and London deeply influences my work, which is both a personal and emotional journey. My photography reflects my interactions with people from diverse cultures, attempting to capture the essence of their worlds and my experiences.

19/05/2026

Meet our resident Liz Cooper, an Associate Professor and Social Sciences Librarian at the University of New Mexico (USA), recently traveled through Greece to interview herbal practictioners about how they acquired their knowledge of herbs. She found that socio-economic shifts in the mid-twentieth century disrupted traditional generation-to-generation knowledge sharing about herbs and today, practitioners are actively rebuilding knowledge through books, libraries, archives, the internet, formal coursework, and local communities of practice. During the residency, she is writing up her research for publication and using her time in Istanbul to explore connections to her Greek fieldwork, hoping to spark future research projects.

19/05/2026

Meet our resident David D’Agostino, as about his project: In Istanbul I am working at the intersection of collage and photography, seeking that which is not seen. I prefer letting things emerge: giving the overlooked subject time to reveal itself, rather than seizing it.

I then juxtapose the images with multiple abstract monotypes, their edges often burnt with incense, as a metaphor for the ‘scent of time’ and the subtle chosen blindness that permeates daily life—without malice, and therefore without guilt.

Over the past two weeks, bagels and flowers floating in the Bosphorus, shadows and light inside Istanbul Modern, torn protest posters, manual street laborers, political graffiti, travelers texting, and single elderly women have all floated to the surface.

15/05/2026

The singing fern, join us tonight at 19:30 , opening performance.

06/05/2026

The Singing Fern — a Non-Solo of Au Wah Yan
in association with Lee Suet Ying, Marta Pang, and Gavin Yip

📍 Arthereistanbul
Rasimpaşa, Kadıköy, Istanbul

🗓 15–23 May
🕒 12:00–20:00 (Mon–Sat)
🕒 13:00–20:00 (Sun)

Opening & Performance
🕢 19:30, 15 May

Presented by nProjekt .gogogo
Hosted by Arthereistanbul
Supported by Hong Kong Arts Development Council

“The Hong Kong Arts Development Council supports freedom of artistic expression. The views and opinions expressed in this project do not represent the stand of the Council.”

11/04/2026

Join us tonight

04/04/2026

İstanbul’da açılış | Yizhen Shen’in “Gece Oyun Alanı” sergisi | Cumartesi, 11 Nisan, 5 pm

Bu bir haftalık sergi, ’in ’daki iki aylık rezidans sürecinde ürettiği resimleri odağına alıyor. Yizhen Shen, Çin‘in Şanghay şehrinden bir ressamdır.

Her bir resim, renk, biçim ve doku arasında kurulan sürekli bir etkileşim ve bunların haz, hayret, hürmet, mizah ve reddediş için taşıyıcılar olarak değişken olasılıkları üzerinden gelişen bir çağrı–yanıt süreciyle ortaya çıkar. İslami hat sanatını çağrıştıran girdaplı şeritler çoğu zaman yüzeyin altındaki katmanlara açılan alanlar olarak okunuyor.

Doom ve “son oyun” anlatılarıyla doygun bir çağda bu resimler, taşkın ve sınır tanımayan bir oyun neşesini, q***r bir tahayyülü ve tuhaf, oyunbaz sapmalarla örülü uzun dolambaçlı yolları benimseyerek canlılığını koruyor. Bu mekânda resim, bir tür gece oyun alanına dönüşüyor. Gece karanlık; ancak oyun sürmeye devam ediyor. Zira kedilerin dışarı çıktığı an tam da bu zaman.

Eser: Yizhen Shen, Wayward Sutra, 2026
Tuval üzerine akrilik
50 × 60 cm

SAVE THE DATE!
Opening in Istanbul | Nightime Playground by Yizhen Shen | April 11, 5pm

This week-long exhibition features a group of paintings completed by during a two-month residency at ArthereIstanbul.

Each painting emerges through a call-and-response process driven by a sustained negotiation of color, shape, texture and their ever-shifting possibilities as vehicles for pleasure, wonder, reverence, humor and refusal. What may appear as swirling ribbons resembling Islamic calligraphy often reveals vistas into buried layers. In a time saturated with doom-and-gloom compulsions and endgame narratives, these paintings insist on exuberance, embracing an ungoverned joy of play, a q***r imagination, and a commitment to long detours that wander off-beat. In this space, painting becomes a kind of nighttime playground. The night is dark, yet we side with play. After all, it is when the cats come out.

Join us for the opening!

Image: Yizhen Shen, Wayward Sutra, 2026
Acrylic on canvas
50 × 60 cm

02/03/2026

Welcome our artist in residence Yizhen Shen 沈逸真 (b. Shanghai, China) is a painter currently working in Shanghai. He studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design in the United States.

In Shen’s paintings, eccentric shapes swell, tilt, droop, contort, and wiggle, as if teetering on the verge of becoming bodies. They emerge through a slow labor of shifting and revision, dissolving and reforming in a state of perpetual metamorphosis. Drawing on q***r and esoteric visual sources, his work hovers between the mischievous and the mystical. Childlike wonder meets sensual color and off-beat humor, sustaining a practice devoted to the joyous, strange, and magical act of painting. For Shen, painting is an act of losing oneself in the grand bazaar of love.

01/03/2026