ABOUT

Artist & INDEPENDENT Curator

Aynur Tıkıroğlu was born in Izmir. She completed her undergraduate and master’s degrees in the Fine Arts Teaching Program of the Department of Art Education at Dokuz Eylül University. She also worked as a lecturer at the same faculty, teaching undergraduate courses. She participated in the Proficiency in Art Program in the Painting Department at Hacettepe University, Institute of Fine Arts.

For over 12 years, she has been involved in various projects as an art educator, artist, and curator, and currently continues her artistic practice at Atölye Dam.

Artist Statement

The starting point of my practice is how the individual situates and legitimizes themselves within the social processes of meaning-making. My research began with the concept of “legitimization” and gradually shifted toward the notion of “self-legitimacy.” The meanings, bodily codes, and behavioral expectations imposed by society form the first layer of my work; the second layer emerges through redefining, transforming, or, when necessary, inventing new meanings.

In this context, my work does not solely focus on external events or observed phenomena, but on the internal resonances, traces, and conceptual ruptures created by witnessing. For me, witnessing is not merely an act of observation; it is a multi-layered process that operates through the body, memory, and the mind. Portraits, figures, and organic forms become symbolic counterparts of emotional residues, unspoken language, and suppressed somatic reactions. Sometimes insects, larvae, or transitional organic forms appear as visualizations of thoughts that have not yet reached articulation—an intermediate state where meaning remains uncertain, yet is clearly felt within the body. I am interested in that threshold where language fails but perception persists.

Within the process of self-legitimacy, my production takes the form of a dictionary. I redefine the words, labels, and concepts imposed on me; I propose alternative meanings to existing terms, or create entirely new words, definitions, and images—terms that do not exist in any dictionary but that I wonder how they might function if they did. For me, this is both an aesthetic and political act: everyone is engaged in the attempt to make sense of the world; my share in this process is to write the vocabulary of witnessing, the body, and desire—to construct my own language and use it as a means of legitimizing my existence. In this sense, art becomes both an instrument of expression and of witnessing; not to reveal the invisible, but to establish a space in which its resistance, silence, and modes of existence can be sensed.

EDUCATION

2017 — Hacettepe University, Institute of Fine Arts, Painting Department, Proficiency in Art Program

2014 – 2016 Dokuz Eylül University, Institute of Educational Sciences,
Department of Art Education, Fine Arts Teaching Program (M.A.)

2008 – 2012 Dokuz Eylül University, Buca Faculty of Education,
Department of Art Education, Fine Arts Teaching Program (B.A.)

2004 – 2008 Buca Anatolian Vocational High School, Graphic Design

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2024 Witness, Project Diyalog, Monk Artroom, İzmir
2024 New Bad Days, Ahmet Adnan Saygun Art Center, İzmir

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2025 Stick Jam: Play Ground, The Letter Art Gallery, İzmir
2025 ATELIER 7 Guest Artist Program, The Letter Art Gallery, İzmir
2021 Raw, Monk Artroom, İzmir
2024 Faces of the Face 2, International Association of Artists, İzmir
2023 Mail Art Project Exhibition, Galeri Eylül, İzmir
2021 City, YOLO, İzmir
2021 Exchange, Project Exhibition, Istanbul
2021 FiveHundredSix, Atölye Dam, İzmir
2020 100 Women 100 Works, Galeri Başkent, Ankara
2020 A4 Exhibition, Galeri Alt Atölye, Ankara
2017 Droitwich Mail Art Festival, Droitwich Gallery, United Kingdom
2017 Zinefest Mail Art Festival, Mundo Fantasma Gallery, Portugal
2015 Painting Installation Exhibition, Galeri Eylül, İzmir
2014 Conceptual Art Exhibition, Galeri Eylül, İzmir
2012 1 Section 30 Painters, Galeri Eylül, İzmir
2012 On the Way Out Painting Exhibition, Mini Gallery, İzmir
2012 Şefik Bursalı Competition Exhibition, İzmir Painting and Sculpture Museum
2012 Group Painting Exhibition Project, İzmir Painting and Sculpture Museum
2011 Nomadic Exhibition, DEU Painting Teaching Exhibition Hall, İzmir
2008 Graduation Project Exhibition, Buca Cultural Center, İzmir

SEMINARS

2019 Trialectical Reading of Space in the Context of Relational Aesthetics
METU SANART III Aesthetics Congress

2018 Exemplifying Installation Art Through Sarkis in a Trialectical Context
Hacettepe University, Faculty of Fine Arts

2017 Reflections of the Infrastructure–Superstructure Dialectic in Art
Hacettepe University, Faculty of Fine Arts

2016 An Analysis of Infrastructure–Superstructure in Painting Through the Works of Yüksel Arslan
Dokuz Eylül University, Faculty of Education

2015 Identity Politics as a Crisis of Representation in Multiculturalism
Dokuz Eylül University, Faculty of Education

2014 The Relationship Between Form and Motivation Based on Expressionist Theory: Kiefer
Dokuz Eylül University, Faculty of Education

COLLABORATIONS

2024 Project Diyalog, Monk Artroom – Curator, İzmir
2024 Reflection of the Phenomenon, Ahmet Adnan Saygun Art Center – Curator, İzmir
2022 Art and Persona, Seminar, Kafkas University, Lecturer, Kars
2021 Project Exchange, Culture for Space, GAPO, No:238, Artist, Istanbul
2021 Art-Developed Online Education, İzmir Education Cooperative & Culture for Space, Facilitator
2021 Postmodern Fractures, Üretimhane, Lecturer, Istanbul
2021 Reading Modern Art, Üretimhane, Lecturer, Istanbul

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