Serra Yentürk has been appointed as the third director of SAHA, founded in 2011 to support artists, curators, and writers working in visual arts from Turkey, to improve their production and development environments, and to enhance their interactions with international art institutions and networks. Yentürk had been serving as Interim-Director since the departure of her predecessor, Çelenk Bafra in February 2024.
Füsun Eczacıbaşı, SAHA’s founding chairwoman stated: “I firmly believe that Serra will be joining forces with the art community and colleagues in promoting projects to reimagine contemporary art and open doors to new questions in these times when we continuously rethink our days and our future. She will be engaging our team and our members, and lead SAHA forward.”
After Bafra’s departure, SAHA had made an open call for applications to the position and formed a Search Committee led by Haro Cümbüşyan, with Aslı Meral Atay, Berna Tuğlular, Felekşan Onar, Saruhan Doğan and Füsun Eczacıbaşı. The committee reviewed the applications and unanimously decided to advise Yentürk as the new Director to SAHA’s Board of Directors. The Board then appointed Yentürk as SAHA’s third director.
About Serra Yentürk
Serra Yentürk served as the Studio Coordinator and managed SAHA’s collaborations with international residency programs abroad between 2022-2024. She studied Sociology in Brussels at the KUB before completing a BA in Art History at Hacettepe University and MA in Cultural Management at Istanbul Bilgi University with her thesis on visual artist estates, which explored the concept from ethical and legal perspectives. From 2012 to 2016, she worked at Galeri Nev Istanbul, where she curated the exhibition, “Robert Mapplethorpe: 1979–89” (2016). She was the editor of Borusan Contemporary in 2021, following her independent curatorial and editorial work in Paris where she was based from 2016 to 2020.
About SAHA
SAHA Association was founded to support artists, curators, and writers working in visual arts from Türkiye in improving their production and development environments, and to enhance their interactions with international art institutions and networks. Since 2011, SAHA has supported 650 different artists, curators, writers, and art initiatives for their projects in over 220 museums, biennials, non-profit art institutions and organizations in 46 countries.
