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Open Space

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Open Space

Open Space supports emerging creative practices and promotes dialogue in the arts through an annual programme of projects in unexpected spaces.

Initiated and developed by Huma Kabakci, Open Space Contemporary is an international contemporary art project that looks into promoting cross-cultural dialogue between artists, curators and art practitioners internationally. The first edition took place in London. This particular moving project space aims to create recognition, present artists and curators coming from diverse cultural backgrounds,

experiences and artistic practices. By calling itself ‘open,’ Open Space Contemporary aims to explore various art media through talks, performances, moving images, screenings and dialogues. One of the key objectives of the project is to further the curatorial and artistic discourse and open up to other exhibitions and symposiums. Open Dialogue Istanbul Initiated by Billur Tansel, is a collaborating project that focuses on educational programmes, talks and dialogues.

10/08/2026

👀 SAVE THE DATES 👀

Delighted to be taking part in Food Art Fair 2026 with a new installation: Breakfast in bed... (and other bad habits).

Working with painter Mia Wilkinson and Kiki of 💮M u r d e r · C a k e💮 , we’re staging the female appetite, both literal and erotic, across the two most charged sites of domestic life: the table and the bed. The work asks where, and how freely, women are permitted to eat, desire and take up space.

Mia’s paintings set the scene, whereas Murder Cake’s sculptural jellies make the banquet edible. Through my curatorial framing I hope to creatively explore my ongoing research into food, conviviality and ritual.

Come misbehave with us :)

📍 Ladbroke Hall, 79 Barlby Rd, London W10 6AZ
🗓 5-6 September

Breakfast in bed... (and other bad habits)
by Mia Wilkinson in collaboration with Murder Cake
Curated by Huma Kabakcı

06/08/2026

I wrote a new, short peace on and which seemed timely ❤️‍🩹🌱 It is now live and can be accessed on the link on my profile or on https://substack.com/Huma Kabakci curatorial/note/p-209831312?r=1pjzao&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action

23/07/2026

Shadow and light have always played an important role in my life and being, more than just metaphors.

“The Sun and The Moon: Art Inspired by the Celestial” at Saatchi Gallery unfolds as a single 24-hour cycle across nine galleries, moving from dawn through zenith and dusk into the darkest hours. I was impressed to see over 170 artists alongside Celtic sun gods, armillary spheres, alchemical manuscripts and opera costumes. It was a mixed bag but a poignant show about how we have organised belief around two objects we cannot touch.

Here are some works that really stayed with me: Sinta Ta**ra sets the register early, her geometry holding light the way architecture does. Sam Douglas builds landscapes that seem varnished by moonlight. Lian Zhang paints figures caught in the soft hour between waking and dreaming. Elisabeth Deane works devotionally, in gilded miniature. And Paula Turmina’s Prayers to Many Circles (2023) stayed with me longest: cosmology drawn as ritual rather than a diagram.

Which is where my own curatorial and anthropological work keeps landing. Whether it is about writing on rituals, divination through Turkish coffee grounds or upcoming projects and thoughts I have been having, the moon phase and the sun play an important part. The exhibition can be seen until 8 September.

16/07/2026

I am currently writing my dissertation for my MA in Anthropology of Food, titled “Conviviality of Turkish Coffee: Gendered Spaces and Fortune-Telling,” focusing on the Turkish diaspora living in London. Conducting the interviews has been the most exciting part, especially around cup reading and samimiyet (intimacy).

It was really interesting to find that none of my participants defended the reading based on accuracy. Instead, they relocated its value to the encounter itself. One interviewee stated bluntly, “the only added value is the connection, not the reading itself,” and another said, “The conversation opens so many doors. Things come out that no one would expect.” Turkish coffee, they suggest, becomes a way to skip formalities.

What I found even more interesting is that none of the five participants I have interviewed so far claimed they were taught. “No one really taught me, but I was sensing something,” said one, while another learned by inventing stories with his university friends.

Who would have known I’d go back to my actual roots and write about Turkish coffee? But its influence on my upbringing, my diasporic life and rituals is unavoidable. There have been ups and downs, frustrations and struggles along the way, and I have until early September to submit while continuing with my other curatorial projects. The work still excites me.

📷 From our Freudian Coffee Cups workshop with Seçil Erel, taken by Emma Witter.
📷 The last two are images from

30/06/2026

Thank you Margaret Hong and ArtTactic for such an insightful and urgent article, grounded in real facts and data. I am thrilled to be included amongst key figures such as of Gertrude and Alexandra Steinacker-Clark | Art Historian, Author, Podcaster of .london, whose knowledge and experience I deeply admire.

As an independent curator, former founding director of and custodian of , I believe transparency and collaboration are what move this ecosystem forward, not working against one another. Shared knowledge feeds greater growth.

This conviction also shaped a recent milestone: the gifting of 65 works from the NHK Collection to the Lidice Art Collection (Lidická sbírka umění) in the Czech Republic. Placing works into a public collection, where they can be seen, studied and shared, feels like transparency and generosity in practice.

Special thanks to Georgia Powell of CURA Art for introducing me to , also mentioned in this article ✨💕

29/06/2026

✨❤️‍🩹🪽A lot around ancestral healing, opening the heart, rituals, and letting go has been coming up for me in the last few weeks with signs of burn out, shifting and awareness. Why am I sharing all of this? Because as creatives we are empaths, our surviving mechanism is to go within, to create and to channel… Three exhibitions stood out for me this month:

✨Ancestors, Lovers, Kin by Emily Waszak at Southwark Park Galleries
✨A Joyful Parasite by Saelia Aparicio Southwark Park Galleries
✨ HELD by Jonathan Baldock at Arnolfini

All three of these exhibitions explore the complex entanglements between bodies, systems of care, cultural heritage, grief and comfort. All three explore different materials, senses in a thought-provoking, somewhat playful and mythological way.

💭 I am grateful to have been inspired and to have made these shows. The two exhibitions by and Emily Waszak are open until 5th of July, don’t miss it 👀 Thank you Judith Carlton for the tour in the hottest day last week 🥵😍

19/06/2026

Looking for a podcast to soundtrack this hot Summer weekend? Look no further.
Freudian Bites Episode 4 is now LIVE, with artist Ingrid Berthon-Moine and chef Mo Kalash.
In this episode I sit down with Ingrid and Mo to revisit our collaboration from March 2025. We talk first memories of taste, cultural memory and heritage, how psychoanalysis was translated into ingredients, the sensory experiences at the table, and so much more.
A conversation to feed both the palate and the mind.
Listen now on Spotify, link in bio.
🎧

11/06/2026

Still dreaming about our Mardin tour with inspiring, brilliant women (and a few men) early this month organised by Mim Art Project and guided by the brilliant Esra Alicavusoglu 💭✨

“The land of the erased, the land of many stories, the land of sorrow, the land of layered cultures, the land of nostalgia, melancholy and broken dreams, the land of resilience, the land of creation and recreation, the land of revival and the land of abundance. This is the land of hopes, dreams and the forgotten.”

Mardin from the air is a city suspended between sky and ground, named by the 7th Mardin Biennial as SKYground, curated by Çelenk Bafra. The bird becomes our guide, drawn from Attâr’s seven valleys and Aristophanes’ city in the clouds.

The journey led us to Mardin’s layers vertically. Deyrulzafaran, a church resting on an older sun temple, Dara Ancient City, where finding the sky means descending into ancient cisterns and tombs…The Sakıp Sabancı Museum, a former cavalry barracks that lets its history show. Marangozlar Kahvesi, a coffeehouse shared by its shopkeeper, and the Ateş Beyler Hamamı in Kızıltepe, a bathhouse woken from decades of silence. A land of hopes, dreams and the forgotten, where the erased and the abundant share the same ground.

I have deep gratitude to Mim Art Project and everyone who shaped this journey, and to Dr Esra Aliçavuşoğlu for her guidance throughout the tour.

21/05/2026

We did it! We finally got together and recorded of generously supported by ✨ Thanks to both and for their valuable time and energy. The episode will be out early June hopefully 🤞 👀

Also swipe to the end to see how cute we are 💞✨

19/05/2026

Reading by .temelkuran has prompted me to think about both unhoming but also my module “Migration, Borders and Space: Decolonial Approaches” by Ozlem Biner at 🫒🕊️ I have been thinking of the word “stranger” and how it is used to create fear for the … I have also been thinking about the basic yet impossible to answer questions that Temelkuran refers to: Who are you? Why did you leave? How will you survive? Why did you leave? How will you survive? When will you go home?

I wore my shirt that was designed by the wonderful for her supperclub last November with chef and did think for a second whether it was actually safe for me to flaunt it so freely after the local elections and recent ulta-national walk last weekend. I also thought about belonging, and how does it not quite at home either here or there. It has been 18 years since I lived in London, UK but somehow I think that’s also coming to an end… Anyway maybe it’s too much thinking and maybe is a bliss… But I highly recommend reading “Nation of Strangers” and if you haven’t already my piece on ‘s online publication.

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Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 5pm
Tuesday	9am - 5pm
Wednesday	9am - 5pm
Friday	9am - 5pm

Website

http://www.openspacecontemporary.com/

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