İREM TOK

Irem Tok (b. 1982) lives and works in Istanbul.

Tok questions the boundaries between humans, nature, and culture, and plays with the permeability between these realms. Using media such as sculpture, painting, animation, ceramics, and spatial installations, the artist creates dense, layered atmospheres woven with intricate details. By creating worlds on both micro and macro scales in her works, she invites the viewer to bear witness to these fragile structures.

Tok’s creative process consists of multi-layered stages such as research, interpretation, discovery, collection, accumulation, reflection, note-taking, drawing, and assembly. In this process, material is not merely a tool but also a carrier of meaning. By transforming the layered surfaces of knowledge found in encyclopedias and books, and by playing with established historical narratives to reimagine them, he questions the structures of knowledge assumed to be fixed and objective, while guiding the viewer toward more subjective, fragmented, and multilayered narrative forms.

She has participated in a number of artist-in-residence programs, including: Kamiyama Air, Japan (2018) Cité des Arts, Paris (2013), Villa Waldberta, Munich (2012), art.homes, Munich (2011), School Gate Project of Incheon Foundation for Art & Culture, South Korea (2010), Litmus Community Space, South Korea (2009).

Her solo exhibitions are ''Meeting the Darkness'',PILOT Gallery, Istanbul,(2024),Close Up, PILOT, Istanbul, Turkey (2019), "Heian No Mori" (Kamiyama, Japan, 2018), "Where I Fell into Earth" (Pilot, Istanbul, 2016), "Against the Wind" (Pilot, Istanbul, 2013) and "Fade Away" (Outlet Galeri, Istanbul, 2011).

Selected group exhibitions include; ''Suppose You Are Not'' Arter, Istanbul, (2024),''The Age Of Fire'', Çankaya Çağdaş Sanatlar Merkezi,Ankara, (2023),"Witness of Flow", Cendere Art Museum, Istanbul, Turkey (2022), "8th Çanakkale Biennial", Çanakkale, Turkey (2022), "Giungla Fest", Lucca, Italy (2022), "5th Mardin Biennial", Mardin, Turkey (2022), "What Water Knows", Pilot Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey (2022), "The Future Begins Today: Carny Genesis NFT Collection”, carny.io, Istanbul, Turkey (2022), “Again”, AKM, İstanbul, Turkey (2021), “At the End of the Day”, OMM, Eshişehir, Turkey (2021), “Intergalactic”, Anna Laudel Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey (2019), “Edition Pilot”, PİLOT, Istanbul, (2018), “La Chute”, REM, Istanbul, Turkey, (2018), “Digging on the shore”, Shelter Artist Run Space, Izmir, Turkey (2018), “Turkey Buch Welten”, Book World, Sinclair Museum, Frankfurt, Germany (2017), "Desire: Selections from the Borusan Contemporary Art Collection", Istanbul (2015), "Signs Taken in Wonder", MAK Museum, Wien (2013), "Blur", Weltraum, Munich (2012), "Etats d’Ames" ENSBA, Paris (2010), "Mind Models: the First Show", Borusan Music and Art Center, Istanbul (2010), "Be Realist, Demand the Impossible", Karşı Sanat, Istanbul (2007).