The Stream Was Right There
April 2026 – March 2027
Bursa
The Stream Was Right There is a multidisciplinary video project that explores the increasingly invisible ecological presence of the Nilüfer River amid processes of urban and industrial transformation, through walking-based artistic practices. The project team, working across architecture, visual arts, and urban research, approaches walking both as a research methodology and as a critical artistic act.
As part of the project, a bodily, intuitive, and visual archive is being developed through six different walking routes along the Nilüfer River. Observations made during these walks are considered alongside oral histories, ecological data, and spatial readings, and are transformed into a multilayered video narrative. Bringing together installation, collage, painting, and digital video techniques, the project aims to make visible the river’s fragmented memory, industrial destruction, and forms of domination over nature.
The project develops a narrative that approaches the Nilüfer River not merely as a landscape element, but as an ecosystem with rights. Shaped by an ecofeminist perspective, the work creates a space for reflection on the ethics of care, collective memory, and human–nature relations. By bringing local stories into public circulation, it also seeks to contribute to discussions around ecological justice and participatory urban culture.
Betül Mutlu Begüm
Betül Mutlu Begüm (b. 1995, Bursa) is a researcher, artist, and architect whose practice focuses on architecture and critical walking. She graduated from the Faculty of Architecture at Uludağ University in 2017 and has continued to develop her practice through academic and theoretical research. In recent years, she has increasingly focused on artistic practice, developing multilayered research that explores relationships with space through perceptual processes, the aesthetics of experience, and mapping practices.
Adopting participatory walks, critical forms of spatial reading, and psychogeography as research methods, the artist completed her MA in the History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture at Istanbul Bilgi University in 2022 with a thesis titled The Aesthetic Form of Urban Dissent: Three Walking Routes in Istanbul. Deepening her artistic research with a focus on ecology, Mutlu develops a theoretical and practical foundation by participating in workshops and production environments informed by different disciplines.
Within the framework of The Stream Was Right There, a project she initiated in 2024 and now continues collectively, she researches the Nilüfer River through walking, reconstructing individual and collective relationships with the river through practices of archiving, storytelling, and collaborative production.
Esin Selimoğlu
Esin Selimoğlu (b. 1986, Adana) is a visual arts educator and printmaker who graduated from the Department of Art Education at Uludağ University and pursued her graduate studies in printmaking and art education. Her practice focuses on visual thinking skills and art education with children, experimental printmaking practices, and biomaterial research, while developing collective production processes with both children and adults.
Her work explores the concepts of urban space, memory, ecology, and material transformation, with a particular focus on engraving, monotype, collagraphy, and alternative printmaking techniques. Biomaterials, natural pigments, upcycled materials, and experimental surface research constitute important components of her practice.
Conducting research on psychogeography, critical walking, collective memory, and ecological narratives, Selimoğlu approaches her artistic practice as a space for research, encounter, and collective thinking.
Fevziye Özocak
Fevziye Özocak (b. 1998, Edirne) is a visual artist living in Bursa. She graduated with a Bachelor's degree from the Painting Department of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Anadolu University in 2020 and completed her Master's degree in Painting at the Institute of Social Sciences, Uludağ University in 2024. Primarily working on canvas, Özocak also incorporates different disciplines into her production process. Her artistic creations center on money, one of the most powerful symbols of the capitalist system; she constructs a new aesthetic order through the pictorial language she creates by disrupting the untouchable surface of banknotes. By making visible the tension between comfort and authority, she points to the contradictory reality of existence. Her works are a visual record of these multi-layered encounters and contradictions. The artist shares her work with the audience in exhibitions, residency programs, and various projects.
Selva Kaya
Selva Kaya (b. 1996, Bursa) is a collage artist working in the fields of architecture and visual arts. After graduating from Istanbul Kültür University Faculty of Architecture in 2018, she turned to art production alongside architectural design. Blending collage art with digital and physical techniques, she creates layered arrangements that distort and reconstruct reality. Her work features a humorous approach that questions the selectivity of the mind, multiple identities, and the fragility of perception. Having made her art practice visible through various exhibitions since 2018, Kaya attracted attention with her exhibition "Details of the House" within the scope of the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial. In 2019, she participated in the Fam Illustration Exhibition at Yapı Kredi Bomontiada and the Dream Gigs Illustrated exhibition within İstCAF with her digital collage works. In 2020, she created works that interacted with the audience through the Ozmoz Interactive Exhibition, and in 2021, she participated in Nelumbo Studios' Embrace Your Shadow group exhibition.
In 2022, she gained visibility in new art formats transferred to the digital environment by participating in the "Dedik Olabilir Metaverse" exhibition. In 2024, she participated in the "Layers" collage exhibition at Derin Art Room. In 2025, she had two works in the exhibition "Map of Emptiness". Kaya's works focus on the fragility of individual perception, the images of the digital world, and the transformable nature of reality.
This page is published on 20 August 2026.
