Seher Uysal

Seher Uysal (b.1983) is a visual artist and researcher based in Istanbul. Inquiries into the everyday often shape her artistic practice and her works are primarily artistic research based reflections on spatial, historical or cultural conditions. She is interested in the exploration of manifold perspectives and understandings of phenomenon, social memory, fact and fiction and specifically how people deal with the weight and expectations of cultural heritage. Recently Uysal has been exploring specific sites such as family homesteads, recreational monuments and an old wood sculptors workshop from the early 1900s in rural Sweden (www.bildhuggarverkstad.com). These explorations focus on storytelling and narration in relation to common hearsay, often misunderstood or disputed. Her practice avoids nostalgia but rather focuses on the shifting meaning of cultural heritage, what places come to represent, tangible and intangible.   Apart from the production of Art works Uysal’s practice includes developing and curating site specific exhibition projects, writing academic texts, and participating in discourses on Turkish Art education and alternative teaching practices. In 2014 she recieved a Ph.D in Fine Art from Kocaeli University where she also worked as a lecturer in 2012 & 2013. She is presently part of the teaching team at the Nesin Art Village summer school where she gives interdisciplinary classes on Visual Culture, Storytelling, Craftsmanship and Self Learning Strategies. She is also one of the initiators of the project Exchanges in Art Education which organizes talks and seminars and collects Turkish and international perspectives on Artistic educational practices.   Seher Uysal has presented and exhibited her work at such places as the Kare Art Gallery, Istanbul, Botkyrka, Stockholm, The Akbank Sanat Beyoğlu in Istanbul and the Pitzer College Art Galleries in Los Angeles. www.seheruysal.com www.exchangesinarteducation.com www.bildhuggarverkstad.com www.legacyproject.se