SB Arch Lab collective
Gülistan Kenanoğlu is an architectural researcher and independent curator. She works under SBArchLab, of which she is the co-founder, and specializes in exhibition practices around postcolonial art and architecture history and the effects of conflicts on cities that benefit from transnational studies.
Artistic and architectural projects she has taken part in include: Becoming Tree, Atlas Pavilion, Izmir, 2022; Bad Romance, İstanbul Design Biennial Instagram Page, 2020; Dreaming a Dream, A4 Atölye, Diyarbakır, 2020; Brichovice, Gallery of Fine Arts in Ostrava, Ostrava, 2020; and Consume-it! Produce-it!, Abdullah Gül University Campus, Kayseri, 2019.
Kenanoğlu lives and works in Diyarbakır and Izmir and is part of the Fellowship for Situated Practice.
Çağlar Hanaylı is an architectural researcher and real-estate expert. He works under SBArchLab, of which he is the co-founder, and specializes in cultural anthropology and migration, postmigration, and their effects on cities’ real-estate and housing crisis.
Artistic and architectural projects he has taken part in include: Becoming Tree, Atlas Pavilion, Izmir, 2022; and Consume-it! Produce-it!, Abdullah Gül University Campus, Kayseri, 2019. Hanaylı lives and works in Izmir and is part of the Fellowship for Situated Practice.
During the BAK Fellowship for Situated Practice they will work on the spatial transformation of Diyarbakır in the post-conflict era and investigate the social, cultural, economic, and political effects on society that occurred after the expropriation of Diyarbakır’s structures in 2016 and their subsequent reconstruction, alienated from their environment. Post-migration scenarios and the affected people’s human rights to use public space will be discussed. The complex relation between architecture, power, and violence will be analyzed via philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s concept of “bare life” and “homo sacer” as considered through the lens of imperial powers, (post-)colonialism, and post-migration in Diyarbakır. This research aims to propose a new reading of architectural history with an understanding away from supremacy, antagonism, and colonial and imperialist forms in the intersection of politics, sociology, and architecture. This research explores the possibilities of incorporating the effects of silent violence into the architectural narrative without fetishizing it.