Seher Uysal (b. 1983) is a visual artist and researcher based in Istanbul. Inquiries into everyday life often shape her artistic practice and her works include 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 of cultural heritage and expectation regarding it.
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. These explorations focus on storytelling and narration in relation to common hearsay, often misunderstood or disputed. Her practice avoids nostalgia and rather focuses on the shifting meaning and representation of cultural heritage sites, both tangible and intangible.
Uysal’s practice also 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 received her PhD in Fine Arts 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.
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