Borga Kantürk (1978, Izmir, Turkey) is an artist, curator and academician. He studied Painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Dokuz Eylül University, where he also completed his M.A. and Proficiency in Art. He currently works as an Assistant Professor in the Painting Department at the same university.
Kantürk is the founder of KUTU Portable Art Gallery (2002) and co-founder of K2 Art Center (2004–2007), 6x6x6 Izmir Collective (2017), and KARANTİNA Art Space (2018). His work includes numerous solo and group exhibitions in Turkey and internationally (France, Germany, Italy, Finland and Slovenia). He lives and works in Izmir.
Action Records: An Anthology of Protests 2023
In this anthology, Borga Kantürk presents a series of protest banners from Turkey and other countries and cities framed by a newspaper published in Turkey. The anthology consists of 128 altered visuals, collected from January to June 2023, and particularly of protests from February, March, April, and May, right after the massive earthquake wave that shook the entire country and caused great destruction in the east of Turkey. The process is concluded with the end of elections, with a defeat and a major disappointment for secularism and the mindset. Each recorded image is numbered and presented day by day by the artist.
As a former habit, the artist engages in the act of buying a daily newspaper and carefully examines a newspaper he trusts, one free of political censorship. He cuts out and collects protest photographs where banners are visible. In the protest images he cuts, saves, and categorizes, he covers the figures depicted with graphite, using the darkest pencil scribbles. For the rare colored photographs he encounters, he coats the backgrounds with some symbolic colors seen during protests.
The records, divided into the months of 2023, include the banner messages that appeared during the protests of that period under each month. Events, locations, and people remain unclear, and we witness the discourse of the public only in the form of anonymous voices and writings. Within that rumbling darkness, we view the "narrative" and the "written words," and they are imprinted in our imagination.
By transforming the deconstruction of media framing into an artistic practice, Borga Kantürk invites us to reconsider and become aware of the relationships between what is shown, highlighted, and concealed or censored. The solitude of the messages, while seemingly reinforced and reconstructed, also references the inevitable fate of gradually blending into silence and darkness. The lack of ownership and rarity of collective resistance efforts are defined by the “isolation” of the banner images.
Action Records: An Anthology of Protests 2023
Black Frames, Polaroid Series - 25 pieces, 2025
Loser's Club, 2014-2015, Photographs, 39 pieces
“In Turkey, many people bet on their favourite sport with hopes of making some quick money. There are many bookmakers (iddaa) in the cities, which are owned by the state. These can be used by any-one wishing to make a bet. The artist photographed 39 discarded betting tickets that had brought no earnings to their owners. These tickets, lying in the streets torn and dirty, do not detract the optimistseager for riches, who stroll from bookie to bookie.”
Nina Jesih
What a Wonderful World, 2015, Photographs, 3 pieces
Seat Marks, 2017, Photographs, 6 pieces
Borga Kantürk, one of the 2nd term SAHA Studio artists, talks about his project titled Library of Short Distances, which he realized at SAHA Studio between March –December 2020.
Artist Talk: A Library for Short Distances
Revolving around the Library of Short Distances which is currently on view at the Arter Library, this talk delivered by curator, artist and academic Borga Kantürk will focus on the inception of the work, as well as exploring the notion of the artwork as a mobile library by delving into the myriad experiential possibilities offered by the library/artwork in terms of its viewers/readers.
Academia: Artistic Praxis, Work of Research, and Suggestions
Speakers: Kerem Ozan Bayraktar, Borga Kantürk,
Yasemin Nur Moderator: İbrahim Cansızoğlu
Memory Research Office: Collect.Cut.Create.Re-Create
The publication The Exhibition Book by Borga Kantürk, now available online, is yet another phase in a years-long collaborative process between the artist and curators Saša Nabergoj and Simona Žvanut. His solo exhibition Memory Research Office: Collect.Cut.Create.Re-Create at Škuc Gallery, introduced his works for the first time to Slovene audience, and was prepared and produced by the artist and the World of Art School for Curators and Critics of Contemporary Art.
Safları Sıklaştırmak / Closing the Ranks
“Closing The Ranks”, realized between 2009 and 2011, and comprised of 34 drawings constitutes an anthology focusing of certain events that reveal the interplay between the duo of soccer and politics. 34 drawings bringing together the lived historical stories from a diverse geography spanning from Latin American countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile to the historically powerful representatives from the motherland of soccer such as Great Britain and Germany ; and from there to the Mediterranean western shores, Italy, Spain and on the Eastern coast, Algeria, Egypt and Turkey. These drawings strive to recount stories of resistance, solidarity and passion through soccer and the stadium tribune culture. The work focuses on the mass impact of this most popular sport, and conjunctionally, on the political and class awareness that transpires in the stadium.
if we can not go...
A graphic novel project by Levent Ayata, Özgür Demirci, Borga Kantürk and Mert Yavaşça. Collaboration with illustrator Hürel Çobanoğlu, 2020
The Man Who is Expected to Save the World, 2006, drawing series, 12 pieces
Borga Kantürk © 2025
Upcoming Exhibition
"In the deathcar, we are alive"
Borga Kantürk
24. 9. 2025 – 16. 11. 2025
Ivan Grohar Gallery,
Škofja Loka Museum
Grajska pot 13
4220 Škofja Loka, Slovenia
Curators:
Anabel Černohorski, Ezgi Ceren Kayırıcı