Isil Ezgi Celik

Dr Isil Ezgi Celik, the director of capitArt, is an academic, an art curator, an art collector and a writer. She conducts interdisciplinary and multicultural research on the transformation of human creativity in connection with technology. She is passionate about art brut, tribal art and digital art since she sees them as the extremes of contemporary human creation.  Isil thinks that contemporary forms of art function as languages to tell elaborated narratives pushing perception on the social phenomenon. Her art curatorial work is philosophical and seeks to unfold the manifold faces of the Other in the age of techno-capitalism as the locus of political resistance.

Isil is a PhD in international cooperation in art from Nagoya University in Japan on the most prestigious Japanese government scholarship and worked at United Nations Fund Population Myanmar Office as a researcher and project manager of an art project for the competition of her doctoral studies. She has a master’s degree in visual communication design and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy with the division of art and aesthetics that she completed at Galatasaray University in Turkey and at l’Université Paris 8 in France.

Isil has worked in various roles such as art curator, project manager, exhibition designer and director in the art industry and in academia. She curated and managed contemporary art exhibitions and put on art shows (talks, workshops and residencies) in collaboration with governmental institutions, public museums and private bodies in France, Turkey, Belgium, India, Japan, Myanmar, and England. In 2021, she founded capitArt in London and collaborated with several international organisations.

Isil has published several academic works, writings on art and prose poetry books with the pen name Esha Mathur. Isil works closely with  decentralised organisations and is a member of AWITA London.