Defne Tesal

Defne Tesal is a Turkish visual artist born in Istanbul in 1985. Her practice centres on repetitive, rhythmic gestures across painting, drawing, woven sculpture, video, performance and site-specific installation. She trained in stage and costume design in Istanbul and earned an MA in the Netherlands in 2019. In autumn 2019 she took part in a residency at KulttuuriKauppila Art Centre in Ii, Finland, working with Murat Yildiz on a community project with mental health service users. The resulting paper newspaper, Dream News, focused on future hopes rather than problems.