Artist Residencies in Turkey
A curated guide to residency programs, production spaces, and research-based initiatives supporting contemporary art in Turkey.
The residency ecosystem in Turkey has developed largely outside formal state structures, shaped instead by independent initiatives, private foundations, and a handful of long-running production spaces that emerged alongside the contemporary art scene from the 1990s onward. Istanbul concentrates the largest share of activity, where residencies often function as bridges between the city's institutional infrastructure and its more experimental, project-driven layer, hosting international artists, curators, and researchers for periods that typically combine studio time with public programs, open studios, and engagement with local practitioners. Artist residencies in Turkey respond to a specific condition: the contemporary art field is dense in production but historically thin in public funding, which has placed residency programs at the center of how artists access time, space, materials, and critical exchange.
Beyond Istanbul, the residency map extends into regions with distinct histories and material conditions—Cappadocia, the Aegean coast around Izmir and Ayvalık, and the southeast around Mardin and Diyarbakır—where smaller, often artist-run programs invite research grounded in landscape, archaeology, migration, language, and contested historical memory. These provincial residencies frequently operate with site-specific frameworks, encouraging slower, fieldwork-based methods over conventional studio production. International artists working in residence typically encounter a curatorial vocabulary already attuned to questions of border, geography, and minority histories, which has made the country a useful site for research-based residencies addressing the wider Mediterranean and post-Ottoman geographies. The relationship between residency programs and the wider network of institutions in Turkey remains close, with many residents presenting work in the city during or shortly after their stay, and a smaller but growing number engaging directly with the contexts further east and along the coast.
Selected Artist Residencies in Turkey
A curated selection of residency programs supporting contemporary art production, research, and international exchange.
SAHA Studio
SAHA Studio is the residency program of SAHA, a foundation dedicated to supporting contemporary art from Turkey. Operating from İstanbul Manifaturacılar Çarşısı in Unkapanı, it offers six-month residencies to visual artists from across the country, providing studio space, production budget, curatorial feedback, and structured networking with international curators invited through SAHA's curatorial program. It anchors local production within international circuits.
Among the most structurally significant residencies in the country, it shapes the visibility and mobility of artists from Turkey within international biennials, museums, and residency networks.
Istanbul Modern International Artist Residency Program
Hosted by Turkey's first museum of modern and contemporary art, the program invites international artists to engage with Istanbul's cultural and urban context through research, production, and dialogue with the museum's curatorial team. Residents situate their projects within the institutional infrastructure that has shaped contemporary art reception in the country since the early 2000s, often contributing to public-facing programs at the museum.
As the residency arm of a major museum, it links institutional contemporary art discourse in Istanbul with sustained international artistic exchange across disciplines and generations of practice.
Gate 27
Operating residency spaces in Istanbul and the Aegean town of Ayvalık, Gate 27 hosts artists, researchers, and academics across disciplines, pairing the city's institutional density with a coastal site oriented toward concentrated work. The program builds collaborations with universities, cultural institutions, and art professionals, framing residency time as a tool for research, production, and dialogue between Turkey's central and provincial cultural geographies.
Distinctive for its dual-site model, it connects Istanbul's institutional infrastructure with Ayvalık's slower research environment, expanding residency geography along the Aegean coast.
Halka Art Project
Based in Moda on the Asian side of Istanbul, Halka Art Project is a self-organized contemporary art initiative that has run an artist residency since 2011. The program supports international artists working on projects developed in dialogue with the city, complementing its residency with curated exhibitions, public events, and collaborations with practitioners working both within Turkey and abroad on contemporary visual art.
A long-running independent residency rooted in Kadıköy, it reflects how artist-run organizations in Istanbul sustain contemporary art production outside institutional and commercial structures.
PASAJ
PASAJ is an Istanbul-based independent art initiative founded in 2010, originally as PASAJist, running residency programs alongside its exhibitions, workshops, and public events. Since 2022 based at Barın Han in the historic peninsula, the program invites artists, curators, and cultural practitioners to develop site-specific projects in dialogue with the social context, memory, and inhabitants of the neighborhoods it works in.
Among Istanbul's most durable independent art initiatives, it grounds residency practice in socially engaged, neighborhood-scale research and dialogue with non-art audiences.
arthereistanbul
Founded in 2014 in Kadıköy, arthereistanbul operates a custom-made residency program for artists, researchers, curators, and writers, with a particular history of supporting artists in exile through its ACT residency network. The space combines studios, archive rooms, a sound lab, and a new media lab, framing residencies as research-oriented rather than production-driven, and connecting residents with local cultural actors and international partners.
Its work with artists in exile and forced migration positions it as a distinctive node in Istanbul's residency landscape, attentive to the politics of mobility itself.
maumau Art Residency
Launched in 2012 and now hosted at the Istanbul Design Museum in Süleymaniye, maumau runs ten-week residencies across visual arts, sculpture, printmaking, photography, new media, and adjacent disciplines. The program emphasizes collaboration with local craftspeople and culminates in exhibitions and artist talks, embedding residents within the institutional density of the historic peninsula alongside neighbors such as SALT and IKSV.
Its move into the Istanbul Design Museum gave a long-running independent residency a formal institutional anchor without altering its emphasis on craft collaboration and exchange.
CerModern hub artist residency programme
Based at CerModern in Ankara, one of the few large-scale contemporary art institutions outside Istanbul, the hub artist residency program has run since 2011, offering local and international artists three- to six-month residencies free of charge across three workshops within the institution's hub art space. Residents access exhibition support within CerModern's project area, anchoring contemporary art production in the capital.
One of the few institutional residencies operating outside Istanbul, it extends the country's residency map to Ankara and positions the capital within national contemporary art production.
This is a curated selection of residency programs. Explore the broader contemporary art ecosystem of Turkey.
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