Mk Yurttaş
Performance Artist
Experimental, Research- based Art
Mk received a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture and a Master’s degree in Architecture with a focus on “the hybridization of body and space” from Istanbul Technical University (ITU); and a Doctorate in Art (PhD) from Yıldız Technical University (YTU) with a research on “the posthuman body in contemporary art.” Through this research, Mk was accepted into the MA Fine Art Program at University of the Arts London, Central Saint Martins. In 2021, they participated in the Artist Residency Project at the School of Visual Arts New York with the support of the American Turkish Society’s Artist Support Award. In 2025, they conducted performance art workshops at Universidade Lusófona de Lisboa through the Erasmus Exchange Program.
Their work, spanning performance, installation, video, photography, drawing, text, and spatial interventions, has been exhibited in Turkey at Pera Museum, Evliyagil Museum, Mamut Art Project, 5533, BAS, and the Istanbul Biennial, as well as internationally in the Netherlands, Poland, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Hong Kong, and the United States.
Mk’s artistic practice unfolds through mikaye, an ongoing research project. mikaye is a schizoplane where fictional personae—including Mk—interact with one another. In mikaye, the personae live and create together. While each may carry different names, none possess a fixed, stable appearance, mode of production, or identity. They flow into one another, slipping into the plane from one point and emerging through another persona—sometimes vanishing for months in the depths, only to be thought lost.
Mk lives in Istanbul and continues their artistic and academic research in collaboration with Performistanbul and at Haliç University.