Gava Vî Cîya Dibînim (When I See This Place)
April – October 2026
Diyarbakır
Gava Vî Cîya Dibînim (When I See This Place) is a project that aims to make visible the relationship between place and cultural memory. The work focuses on places that have left traces in the memory of a village and acquired meaning through their names and stories, bringing narratives that have gradually faded over time back to the surface. Within the framework of the project, selected places are studied directly on site and painted in oil on canvas, while the memories of village residents associated with these locations are recorded through oral accounts. These narratives are documented through video recordings, creating an additional layer of memory that accompanies the visual works.
This multilayered structure, established between painting, narrative, and video, reveals place not merely as a physical entity, but also as a space shaped by experience, language, and forms of remembering. Producing the works in Kurdish contributes to preserving local knowledge and oral culture in their original language.
The exhibition and video screening at the end of the project will create a space for collective gathering in the village, while leaving the artworks in situ is intended to establish a long-term cultural archive. In this way, the project proposes a space of artistic production that not only documents memory, but also actively reconstructs it.
Şirin Sağlam Kaya
Şirin Sağlam Kaya began her studies in the Painting Department at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Mardin Artuklu University, in 2019 and graduated in 2023. In 2024, she began a non-thesis MA in Kurdish Language and Literature at the same university, completing the programme in 2025. Her graduate studies focused on the themes of light and shadow in painting.
She currently lives and works in Diyarbakır. In her practice, the artist explores the structural issues of the culture in which she lives and their psychological, social, and emotional effects on individuals, working primarily through a realist approach while at times incorporating abstraction.
The striped textile motif that frequently appears in her work symbolises both the aesthetic order of traditional weaving and the ways in which individual lives are woven together.