Turkish Artists at Art Basel Miami 2025

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2 December 2025

Art Basel Miami 2025 welcomes an exciting and expanded selection of Turkish artists this year.

Turkish contemporary art takes its place with a confident and notable presence throughout the intense program of Art Basel Miami Week—an event that transforms Miami’s December into a vibrant cultural axis. From the main fair Art Basel Miami Beach, where hundreds of galleries converge, to satellite shows including CONTEXT, Aqua, Scope, and Untitled, the city becomes an open-air map of global art.

Within this energetic landscape, ACT CONTEMPORARY Paris–Miami brings Turkish artists together for the sixth time, presenting them at both CONTEXT Art Miami and AQUA Art Miami. Founded in Paris in 2015, the organization’s founder and curator Nazan Aktan has long been devoted to increasing the visibility of Turkish artists across Europe and the United States. Their continued participation in Miami Art Week is, in many ways, the natural extension of this long-term curatorial vision.

Aktan frames her purpose clearly:
“Visibility on international platforms matters not only for our artists’ individual careers, but also for the accurate reflection of our country’s cultural diversity. My goal is to create a sustainable link between Turkey and the U.S.–Europe art scene through contemporary art.”

This year’s roster gathers artists from a wide range of disciplines, showcasing the breadth and sensibility of Turkish contemporary art—both within the expansive architecture of CONTEXT and the more intimate, boutique environment of AQUA.

AQUA Art Miami Selection

Emel Vardar

Her sculptures carry the female figure beyond time, pairing the opposing natures of bronze and glass. Each work holds the duality of strength and fragility.

Ayşen Saltan

Through her OneLine technique, she transforms a single continuous line into a meditative rhythm, creating an expressive terrain between motion and stillness.

Tuncay Topçu

Layered colors, abstract expressionist gestures, and a lyrical sense of rhythm converge in his canvases. Energy and clarity coexist within his textured surfaces.

Tuğba Yazıcı

In her Miami Life series, the city’s neon pulse meets female portraiture and pop-culture aesthetics. Based in Florida, Yazıcı’s works are bold, vivid, and unapologetically contemporary.

Selen Uğur

Using the natural form of the gourd as her sculptural core, she creates joyful, free-spirited female figures. Each piece embraces the idea that “abundance is its own beauty.”

CONTEXT Art Miami Selection

Burcu Ünlü

Her paintings transform the transitions between light and darkness into an inner journey. Rooted in the collective memory of cities, her works open emotional, hopeful spaces.

Demet Dayı

Organic textures, layered surfaces, and abstract rhythms bring the traces of nature to the canvas, enriched with a quiet poetic sensibility.

Dilek Uzunoğlu Örs

Working with sand, coal, soil, and recycled materials, she constructs surfaces where process and experience shape an instinctive visual narrative.

Tuğçe İnan

She approaches color as a gateway into the inner world, exploring quantum connections, collective bonds, and the unseen layers of the human condition.

İzim Çetindağ

Her works foreground warmth, positivity, and emotional clarity—offering a serene yet evocative visual field.

Craft Becomes Contemporary Art: “Quilt Painting” in Miami

One of ACT CONTEMPORARY’s most distinctive projects, From Craft to Art – Quilt Painting, reimagines the traditional Turkish quilt through a contemporary aesthetic. Supported by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the project highlights how cultural heritage can be reinterpreted within a modern artistic language. The series returns to CONTEXT Miami this year as a special showcase.