About
Esra Ozkan’s curatorial practice focuses on the raw material to highlight cognitive experiences created by interdisciplinary artists using emerging new technologies. She frequently collaborates with interdisciplinary artists/technologists who deal with the political and social problems caused by emerging technologies. Esra Ozkan’s curatorial and academic writings bring philosophy together with the post-digital terminology and the effects of Post-human concepts in interdisciplinary arts.
Esra Ozkan was the curator and director of the 2017-2019 bangprix program, which supported young artists under the age of 35 in data art, new media, bio art, and kinetic arts. bangprix is Turkey’s leading platform where art, design, technology and science come together. Between 2017-2019, more than fifty artists’ works were exhibited in 13 exhibitions. Esra Ozkan also curated the bangprix London exhibition in 2019, and presented the Design Thinking Project Insight Report: Global Mobility of Artist at Digital Art Field at Touch Designer Montreal during her time at the bangprix project.
Since 2019, Esra has been a curator at Contemporary Istanbul (CI) which is an international art fair in Istanbul. She has been the curator and director of the Plugin series at CI, which is a series of new media and digital arts exhibitions. Every year, Esra invites and hosts many international artists for the Plugin series. In 2019, The PlugIn exhibition received 74000 walk-in audiences within a week. The exhibition and its artworks have been reported in the International and local press, receiving over 10 million views on social media.
Esra Ozkan has been one of the founding members of the digital art market startup based in Turkey, named De Artium. The platform, which also includes foreign artists and more than 300 works, invites both local and international artists.
In 2021, Esra led large-scale installation projects as a co-curator. Istanbul The Lights Festival in 2020 exhibited 50 art installations by 54 artists in public spaces scattered around urban scenes of Istanbul, sponsored by the City of Istanbul. In conjunction with Istanbul the Lights, Augmented Istanbul was also a collection of Augmented Reality installations created by 17 leading artists on a mission to build a bridge between technology, sculpture, and painting on urban landscapes. The highlights of the exhibition have received over a million views on social media, and have been vastly reported in Turkish mainstream press. It has been reported in the International press, and also has received over 1 million views on social media.
Additionally, Esra is the co-coordinator of the V'R’ Storytellers workshop and hackathon at the Amber Network Festival. During the hackathon, the participants are developing solutions to utilize the boundaries of VR and artistic themes of urban renewal/gentrification/renewal and refugee/immigrant/guest/neighbor's within the scope of the festival of Post-Digital Ignorance. Amber Platform is currently happening in the cities of Istanbul, Berlin, Baalbek, Bishkek, Cairo, Casablanca, Khartoum, Istanbul, Tehran, Shiraz.
Since 2020, she is artistic director of Istanbul Digital Art Festival. Istanbul Digital Arts Festival aims to display the works of artists, who embraces past/future concepts as a unifying force and accept the intersection of art and technology as a production field, through the theme of “searching_connection…". There are more than 35 artists while expecting visitors from Turkey, Europe and Middle East as well.