Founding and Mission 

The IAR

The Istanbul Artist Residency project was established by the artist and art manager Polina Somochkina and the businessman art collector Halil Ibrahim Cavuşoğlu. The first project was successfully realized in April - May of 2019 with the support of the Consulate General of Ukraine in Istanbul headed by Consul General Oleksandr Gaman. The IAR aims to explore the terrain and local context through international participants, who are selected from the pool of applicants, and then brought together in Istanbul, allowing artists to live here with time to reflect, research, and produce artwork. The Project 2020 has become almost the only international residency in the world that was held not online (in real life), bringing together artists from six (6) different countries. The project aims not only to host artist residents but also to form alternative local centers of education and exchange of experience in a socially artistic environment through artist talks, exhibitions, open studios, and online residencies, which have been happening as a response to the challenges of the time in connection with the global pandemic.

The artist residency is a part of a strategy to place the city at the level of a progressive cultural center. Istanbul has great prospects for the development of the art residency project as a platform for the art exchange, combining cultures of the East and West.

Attracting more and more international participants every year, representing the art scene of Istanbul abroad, in cooperation with more countries will contribute to developing cultural diplomacy. For the third year in a row, we have been actively cooperating with the Ukrainian Embassy in Turkey and the Consulate General of Ukraine in Istanbul, in 2021 we are also cooperating with the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Istanbul.

Polina Somochkina

Co-founder of the IAR

Art Director and project manager of the IAR, Art Advisor 

Partner Countries 2021

Partners