Selin Nisa Açıkel Turkish
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Selin Nisa AcikelSearching, 2025Charcoal on paper30 x 30 cm -
Selin Nisa AcikelVeil, 2025Charcoal on paper30 x 30 cm
Selin Nisa Açıkel is a Turkish artist and material-led architectural designer whose work focuses on reuse systems, environmental processes, and the persistence of memory in material form. In her Veil series of charcoal drawings, she draws from her Circassian-Turkish family heritage, a community displaced from the Northwest Caucasus in the nineteenth century and resettled across Anatolia. Tracing the gradual thinning of cultural transmission, her work treats portraiture as a way of registering temporal, fragmentary forms of remembrance. She lives and works in London.
Selin Nisa Açıkel (b. 2000) is a Turkish artist and material-led architectural designer based in London. She holds an AA Diploma (MArch) and BArch from the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London. Her practice focuses on reuse systems, environmental processes, and the persistence of memory in material form. The Veil series of charcoal drawings draws from her Circassian-Turkish family heritage—a community displaced from the Northwest Caucasus in the nineteenth century and resettled across Anatolia. Tracing the gradual thinning of cultural transmission across generations, the works treat portraiture as a temporal, fragmented condition shaped by erasure and return, alongside atmospheric evocations of landscape. She has worked as a Part II Architect at Foster + Partners and currently as Designer/Maker at Yes Make. Residencies include ERRA Art Farm (Bodrum) and Gorvell (Porto). Exhibitions include group shows in Porto, Istanbul, and Milan Design Week.
