Nilhan Sesalan
Reef / exhibition process
2026
Riyadh Saudi Arabia
…. Traditions of space-making are often based on spectacle: bold statements in bronze, festival-scale activations. Nilhan's intervention is different. Her works emphasize stillness, listening, ellipses, and duty rather than exclamations. These works create memories of place rather than tourist filters….
Marek Wolynski
is a curator and cultural strategist specialising in public art, cultural infrastructure, and international placemaking.
Ferah Feza, Evliyagil Dolapdere, 2020
Ferah Feza, 2020
Exhibition Book
In her works, she brings together the intrinsic and the beyond sometimes through a ‘shell’, sometimes through a ‘nail’, and at other times through an interpretation which is an “embodiment” in itself while also paying home to shadow and texture. Producing with an empathy which lets neither the material nor the meaning go to waste, she does not diferentiate between bulk and particle… Therefore in Sesalan’s knowledge of existence and the world, informed by what we can claim to be her existentialist approach, life and death exists in the same body; just like in her own works. The distant and the near are derived from each other with a relative, but transcendent awareness…
Evrim Altuğ
is a Turkish writer and art critic focusing on contemporary art, visual culture, and urban life.
the artworks of Nilhan Sesalan, we witness a constant effort to perceive everything as ‘it is’, along with interpretations of references from archaeology, architecture, literature and nature at the level of a daily life that gradually becomes more indirect.
A deep historical-cultural accumulation underlies the past of her works, associations and stress underlie their present, and an eternal inference and tranquillity mark their future.
In her hands, the themes which range from the human life to the mysteries and chaos of nature transform into the tranquillity of endless associations of an artwork that owns its own freedom; like a dervish who whispers rich, deep, confident and grand thoughts.
Yüksel Aksu
ıs a Turkish filmmaker known for blending humor and drama while portraying authentic rural life, especially from the Aegean region, with a warm, natural, and human-centered storytelling style.
…. Sesalan turns toward memory, trace, and disappearance. Her sculptures are less about mythological motif and more about the poetics of absence.
Yet hybridity remains the ground of her practice. She re-inscribes fragments of memory into abstract forms that are neither traditional icons nor purely modernist constructions. They inhabit the same interstitial space Bhabha describes, a space where the past is neither simply preserved nor abandoned, but transformed in the act of translation. ….
Yazid Anani
is a Palestinian curator known for his research-based practice, connecting contemporary Arab art with global conversations on identity and politics.
Even though Nilhan Sesalan’s silent yet highly expressive and heavily-burdened sculptures apparently leave their residue behind, they never escape the latter.. They leave their souls, feelings, secrets, and whispers in the nooks and crannies of the sculptures. Just like poetry, and just like lyrics, these sculptures hide their secret worlds for you to discover, feel delighted, and to interpret them from your own personal perspective. The residual parts of the finalized sculpture, which fall down while carving out time, come together in another manner as parts of the psyche of the sculpture, and find themselves a place within it…
Cem Sorguç
is a Turkish architect known for his contemporary and context-sensitive approach to architecture and urban design.
