Pınar Öğrenci
Artist and filmmaker, who explores displacement, migration, survival, and resistance through films and installations shaped by her background in architecture. Her poetic, video-based works trace material cultures of forced displacement, offering decolonial and feminist perspectives at the intersection of social research, everyday practices, and lived human stories. Engaging place, site, and architecture as manifestations of violence, her practice responds to silenced collective histories while envisioning futures rooted in justice, equality, and healing. Through local archives and collaborative memory work, she invites communities to confront what has been remembered, erased, or overlooked, opening space for layered experiences of survival, resilience, and resistance.
Her work has been presented internationally at major exhibitions and institutions, including the Venice Biennial (2024), Harvard Museum (2024), documenta fifteen (2022), 12th Gwangju Biennial (2018), Sharjah Biennial (2017), and solo exhibitions at Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (2025), Frac Bretagne (2024), and Berlinische Galerie (2023). She received the Villa Romana Art Prize (2023), was nominated for the Böttcherstrasse Kunst Prize (2022), and her films have screened at festivals such as Visions du Réel (2023) and İstanbul Film Festival. Her first documentary “Gurbet is a home now” won the Special Jury Prize at Documentarist (2021). Founder of the initiative MARSistanbul, Öğrenci has also written extensively on art and architecture since the late 1990s and participated in residencies and research programs across Europe and Latin America.
by Pınar Öğrenci