Panel Discussion:
Art School Dissent
Salt Beyoğlu
December 20, 2025 13.00
Art School Dissent poster: Chris Evans
Walk-in Cinema
Art School Dissent explores trans-geographical entanglements between education, geo-economic circumstances, cultural conditions, and communities through which alterity is articulated and dissent enacted. Initiated by artist and researcher Chris Evans, this long-term project consists of a series of public events in which invited artists, educators, and researchers collaboratively and discursively map out genealogies, asking: To what extent are the conditions that elicit art school dissent broadly shared? Are there commonalities of desire to be found in dissenting modes of art school education? How is this affected by geographical positions?
By considering these particularities, the project seeks to chart genealogies of art school dissent—identifying what has been challenged, the subsequent ways in which pedagogies have been reshaped, the extent to which alternative models have been adopted, and how these may inform future artistic pedagogies.
This free-admission panel discussion will feature Sarp R. Özer, Selin Yağmur Sönmez, Merve Çifcibaşı, Zeynep Habiboğlu, Caner Karavit, and Fırat Yusuf Yılmaz. The program will be held in Turkish, with simultaneous translation into English.
PROGRAM
13.00–13.40 Sarp R. Özer, “Art of Controversy: Toward a Non-Nostalgic Historiography of the Academy”
This presentation will address the debates and disputes that occurred between 1969 and 1983 within the Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts (today Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University), which remain absent from the official historical narrative. Rights-based struggles, institutional conflicts, and interventions, proposals, and criticisms from state authorities concerning the Academy’s future will be examined through selected cases.
13.40–14.20 Selin Yağmur Sönmez, Merve Çifcibaşı, and Zeynep Habiboğlu, “ders BELGELİĞİ”
This presentation will focus on the formation of “ders BELGELİĞİ,” a pedagogical project initiated in 1995 in H. Avni Öztopçu’s studio within the Department of Art and Crafts Teacher Education at Marmara University’s Atatürk Faculty of Education. It will explore how the lecture notes kept in the studio gradually evolved into a magazine and eventually into a collective memory encompassing various processes of production.
14.20–15.00 Caner Karavit, “Akadeğilmi”
This presentation will trace the experimental art practices initiated by student collectives during the Academy’s transition into a university between 1980 and 1990. It will discuss how short-lived collectivities—such as Barbar’t, Fosseptik Doğa Korumacıları, Yeşil Sanatçılar, Akadeğilmi, and Grup 9—played a unique role within the civil cultural networks of the period and how they expanded the space for artistic expression through performance-based practices.
15.00–15.40 Fırat Yusuf Yılmaz, “CLASS DISMISSED: On Student Civil Disobedience”
The final session of the program will look into student-led formations at a time when deep student poverty is entrenched in the foundations of the educational system and inequalities in learning processes are increasing. The discussion will center on recent examples of creative civil disobedience challenging the school system and educational paradigms.
Merve Çifcibaşı is a lecturer in the Department of Art and Crafts Teacher Education at Marmara University’s Atatürk Faculty of Education and an active member of ders BELGELİĞİ. She completed her undergraduate studies in 2019 and graduate studies in 2023 in the H. Avni Öztopçu Studio within the same department.
Chris Evans is an artist whose practice spans sculpture, sound, performance, and airbrush painting. While his early works grew out of dialogues with individuals selected for their public or symbolic roles, his recent work focuses on the material and poetic conditions of making, exploring how fabrication can reveal the unconscious structures of contemporary life. His work has been exhibited internationally—including solo presentations at Parasite (Hong Kong), Praxis (Berlin), Project Arts (Dublin), Stedelijk Bureau (Amsterdam), Studio Voltaire (London), and the British School at Rome. He has participated in biennials such as Athens, Berlin, Taipei, Liverpool, and the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam. Evans also works as a researcher at LUCA School of Arts in Ghent, where he currently examines genealogies of art school dissent.
Zeynep Habiboğlu is an artist and an active member of ders BELGELİĞİ. She completed her undergraduate studies in the H. Avni Öztopçu Studio at Marmara University’s Atatürk Faculty of Education Department of Art and Crafts Teacher Education in 2022. She works at the Kazlıçeşme Arts Center and pursues her graduate studies in the Basic Art and Design Department at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University.
Caner Karavit is a Professor in the Ceramics and Glass Art Department at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University. He completed his master’s and doctoral studies in the Graphic Design Department of the same institution, where he joined the faculty in 1990. Between 2007 and 2009, he conducted research on Buddhist cave temples, museums, and art in China. In 2014-2015, he studied traditional Chinese painting under the guidance of Han Shiliu. His works have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, as well as in various collections in Turkey and abroad. He continues to produce works in various media, including original prints, wood carvings, ink painting, and painting.
Sarp R. Özer investigates cases that need to be reassessed in Turkey’s recent history and art history, combining archival research with fiction-based approaches.
Selin Yağmur Sönmez is a lecturer in the Department of Art and Crafts Teacher Education at Marmara University’s Atatürk Faculty of Education and an active member of ders BELGELİĞİ. She completed her undergraduate studies in the H. Avni Öztopçu Studio at the same department in 2017. She studied art education at Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in 2014–2015 as part of the Erasmus+ program. In 2022, she completed her master’s in the Basic Art and Design Department at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, where she is currently pursuing her PhD.
Fırat Yusuf Yılmaz is an independent curator and art writer. He has curated exhibitions in independent initiatives, including Container with Hole at FreyaALT (Istanbul, 2023) and Sidestep / multiplied // insolently at 5533 (Istanbul, 2023). In 2023, he presented his long-term artistic research, Data Cravings: Web Meta/bolisms and Data Digestion, as part of Garp Sessions. In 2024, together with sub, he facilitated [Plug-In/Out], a workshop program on fictional commons, pseudo-organizations, and solidarist ChatGPT monologues. In 2024-2025, he participated in Foreign Objekt’s online research residency program Deep Objekt [0]: Agency at the Computational Turn. He continues his writing and curatorial practice on early net art, meme studies, and autonomous organizational forms of art initiatives.
Art School Dissent explores trans-geographical entanglements between education, geo-economic circumstances, cultural conditions, and communities through which alterity is articulated and dissent enacted. Initiated by artist and researcher Chris Evans, this long-term project consists of a series of public events in which invited artists, educators, and researchers collaboratively and discursively map out genealogies, asking: To what extent are the conditions that elicit art school dissent broadly shared? Are there commonalities of desire to be found in dissenting modes of art school education? How is this affected by geographical positions?
By considering these particularities, the project seeks to chart genealogies of art school dissent—identifying what has been challenged, the subsequent ways in which pedagogies have been reshaped, the extent to which alternative models have been adopted, and how these may inform future artistic pedagogies.
This free-admission panel discussion will feature Sarp R. Özer, Selin Yağmur Sönmez, Merve Çifcibaşı, Zeynep Habiboğlu, Caner Karavit, and Fırat Yusuf Yılmaz. The program will be held in Turkish, with simultaneous translation into English.
PROGRAM
13.00–13.40 Sarp R. Özer, “Art of Controversy: Toward a Non-Nostalgic Historiography of the Academy”
This presentation will address the debates and disputes that occurred between 1969 and 1983 within the Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts (today Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University), which remain absent from the official historical narrative. Rights-based struggles, institutional conflicts, and interventions, proposals, and criticisms from state authorities concerning the Academy’s future will be examined through selected cases.
13.40–14.20 Selin Yağmur Sönmez, Merve Çifcibaşı, and Zeynep Habiboğlu, “ders BELGELİĞİ”
This presentation will focus on the formation of “ders BELGELİĞİ,” a pedagogical project initiated in 1995 in H. Avni Öztopçu’s studio within the Department of Art and Crafts Teacher Education at Marmara University’s Atatürk Faculty of Education. It will explore how the lecture notes kept in the studio gradually evolved into a magazine and eventually into a collective memory encompassing various processes of production.
14.20–15.00 Caner Karavit, “Akadeğilmi”
This presentation will trace the experimental art practices initiated by student collectives during the Academy’s transition into a university between 1980 and 1990. It will discuss how short-lived collectivities—such as Barbar’t, Fosseptik Doğa Korumacıları, Yeşil Sanatçılar, Akadeğilmi, and Grup 9—played a unique role within the civil cultural networks of the period and how they expanded the space for artistic expression through performance-based practices.
15.00–15.40 Fırat Yusuf Yılmaz, “CLASS DISMISSED: On Student Civil Disobedience”
The final session of the program will look into student-led formations at a time when deep student poverty is entrenched in the foundations of the educational system and inequalities in learning processes are increasing. The discussion will center on recent examples of creative civil disobedience challenging the school system and educational paradigms.
Merve Çifcibaşı is a lecturer in the Department of Art and Crafts Teacher Education at Marmara University’s Atatürk Faculty of Education and an active member of ders BELGELİĞİ. She completed her undergraduate studies in 2019 and graduate studies in 2023 in the H. Avni Öztopçu Studio within the same department.
Chris Evans is an artist whose practice spans sculpture, sound, performance, and airbrush painting. While his early works grew out of dialogues with individuals selected for their public or symbolic roles, his recent work focuses on the material and poetic conditions of making, exploring how fabrication can reveal the unconscious structures of contemporary life. His work has been exhibited internationally—including solo presentations at Parasite (Hong Kong), Praxis (Berlin), Project Arts (Dublin), Stedelijk Bureau (Amsterdam), Studio Voltaire (London), and the British School at Rome. He has participated in biennials such as Athens, Berlin, Taipei, Liverpool, and the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam. Evans also works as a researcher at LUCA School of Arts in Ghent, where he currently examines genealogies of art school dissent.
Zeynep Habiboğlu is an artist and an active member of ders BELGELİĞİ. She completed her undergraduate studies in the H. Avni Öztopçu Studio at Marmara University’s Atatürk Faculty of Education Department of Art and Crafts Teacher Education in 2022. She works at the Kazlıçeşme Arts Center and pursues her graduate studies in the Basic Art and Design Department at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University.
Caner Karavit is a Professor in the Ceramics and Glass Art Department at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University. He completed his master’s and doctoral studies in the Graphic Design Department of the same institution, where he joined the faculty in 1990. Between 2007 and 2009, he conducted research on Buddhist cave temples, museums, and art in China. In 2014-2015, he studied traditional Chinese painting under the guidance of Han Shiliu. His works have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, as well as in various collections in Turkey and abroad. He continues to produce works in various media, including original prints, wood carvings, ink painting, and painting.
Sarp R. Özer investigates cases that need to be reassessed in Turkey’s recent history and art history, combining archival research with fiction-based approaches.
Selin Yağmur Sönmez is a lecturer in the Department of Art and Crafts Teacher Education at Marmara University’s Atatürk Faculty of Education and an active member of ders BELGELİĞİ. She completed her undergraduate studies in the H. Avni Öztopçu Studio at the same department in 2017. She studied art education at Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in 2014–2015 as part of the Erasmus+ program. In 2022, she completed her master’s in the Basic Art and Design Department at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, where she is currently pursuing her PhD.
Fırat Yusuf Yılmaz is an independent curator and art writer. He has curated exhibitions in independent initiatives, including Container with Hole at FreyaALT (Istanbul, 2023) and Sidestep / multiplied // insolently at 5533 (Istanbul, 2023). In 2023, he presented his long-term artistic research, Data Cravings: Web Meta/bolisms and Data Digestion, as part of Garp Sessions. In 2024, together with sub, he facilitated [Plug-In/Out], a workshop program on fictional commons, pseudo-organizations, and solidarist ChatGPT monologues. In 2024-2025, he participated in Foreign Objekt’s online research residency program Deep Objekt [0]: Agency at the Computational Turn. He continues his writing and curatorial practice on early net art, meme studies, and autonomous organizational forms of art initiatives.
