About
History
Art Space Project is a guerrilla exhibition concept that started on the road and will always continue on the road. The project travels from city to city and invites everyone who passes by to draw, dance, sing, music. The project exhibits pictures drawn in previous cities and acquires new pictures in each city it goes to; In this respect, it is an interactive exhibition and memory archive that is constantly growing.
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The Art Space Project was established by Diren Demir for the first time on their trip on 20 September 2016 in the village of Arsaköy (Çukurardıç) in Fethiye. Since the first art field established in 2016; many art spaces was created in many parts of the world.
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​The main mission of the Art Space Project is the accessibility of art. On this road, the exhibition space is chosen especially as rural “village” regions where the access of art is limited or “streets” where everyone can interact in their daily routine.
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Art Space Project eliminates all kinds of value hierarchy of art production and set out with the belief that “everyone has an artist inside”. Diren Demir has named this concept, which the Art Space Project can go beyond the uniform corporate galleries in terms of mission and vision, as “guerrilla curatorship“.
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This gallery and exhibition concept created and maintained by Art Space Project is a research area that can provide solutions for the communication between the audience and the artworks, the presentation possibilities of the art. ​
A gallery on the move predicts a future that can reveal the full potential of gallery / exhibition / art institution formations by being inspired and fuelled by the mobility of artists.
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Art Space Project showcase the memory archives obtained from each city in different places, enabling different people who have never seen and know each other to have a connection, communicate without words and create a collective network. Art Space Project is non-profit and all the works it owns are archived online without to be selled, and it continues to travel around the world physically.
Mission
Diren Demir
Interdisciplinary Artist & Independent Curator
Diren Demir (Istanbul, 1997) is a Berlin-based interdisciplinary artist and independent curator. Demir’s work seeks transformative solutions to the challenges posed by patriarchal and authoritarian regimes. Demir’s installations and performances frequently deal with revelation and the body-power relationship as a site of conflict. Demir focuses on transformational activism, participatory practices and developing new models of resistance in their artworks. Demir’s work includes queer themes, using their own body to challenge stereotypical gender positions and de-gender memories of place and the city by referring to LGBTIQ+ history in their articles, seminars and workshops. In 2019, their compilation titled “A Night of June: A Biographical Analysis of the Stonewall Revolution” was published. In August 2022, their new poetry and illustration book “Hail to the Fallen” took its place in bookstores. Demir has curated more than 30 guerrilla exhibitions on streets and rural areas, putting the accessibility of art at the forefront, as well as in places such as Akbank Art and Gazhane Museum. Their works and projects were exhibited in many different countries such as Estonia, Turkey, Serbia, Netherlands, Germany, India…
