The artisans of Büyük Valide Han represent a rare and vital community where living craftsmanship, cultural heritage, and contemporary artistic practice intersect. As venue of the Mahalla Festival and as host site for “Magic Carpets” artist residencies, the Han served not only as a historical space, but emerged as a collaborative ecosystem grounded in sustainability, equity, and community well-being.
The Artisans there are part of a non-corporate collective, active in educational practices (Links to Universities, workshops, internships) and collaborative community-oriented activities like the Mahalla Festival.
Mahalla Midas Touch became a platform for mutual co-creation and comprehension, emerging through the dialogue between international and local artists and craftspeople from the Han.
“Magic Carpets” projects at Mahalla Festival 2025
Ieva Kotryna Ski’s project “Measuring Time with Coffee Spoons”
Artist Ieva Kotryna Ski’s project “Measuring Time with Coffee Spoons” explored resistance to productivity-driven modern life by focusing on idle, lingering moments along the Bosphorus. In close collaboration with the artisans, a distorted spoon was collectively handcrafted as a surreal symbolic object for “measuring time.” This collaboration has since evolved into ongoing discussions about developing symbolic prototype objects that merge artistic concepts with traditional craftsmanship, extending the project’s life beyond the festival. As a form of “soft resilience building,” the Festival and the Craftsmen are developing an online platform—Mahalla Traces: Objects of Memory in Motion—to monetize conceptually curated objects and toolkits handcrafted in the Han.
Tbel Abuseridze, “What Has Man Made of Man”
One inspirational reference is Artist Tbel Abuseridze’s residency Project, “What Has Man Made of Man,” employed the cyanotype photographic process to capture fleeting human presences inside the Han. These images were transferred onto translucent fabrics and mounted on copper surfaces handcrafted by metalworkers Mert and Serhat. The artisans also supported gold-plating processes and provided copper elements that grounded the fragile images in material permanence.
Expanding beyond the Han, the project incorporated cyanotype works depicting Istanbul’s Kanal Istanbul development, accented with gold leaf to evoke emerging bridges and tensions between preservation and unchecked urban transformation. The installation invited public participation and led to two community workshops during the Mahalla Festival, directly involving residents, visitors, artists, and craftsmen in shared creation and dialogue. Kanal Istanbul, a proposed artificial canal parallel to the Bosporus, is widely regarded as environmentally and socially unsustainable.
Through these collaborations, the artisans of Büyük Valide Han acted not as service providers, but as cultural agents—co-authors of meaning, mediators between past and future, and stewards of sustainable cultural practice. Their openness, skill, and commitment transformed artistic residencies into lasting community encounters, making them a powerful example of how heritage-based communities can actively shape inclusive, environmentally conscious cultural futures in Europe and beyond.
Number of community members included in the project: 6
Reasons for participating in the “Magic Carpets” project:
Historic rootedness of the Han as a living craft ecosystem We interviewed the artisans after the festival. They expressed that the Han itself is not just a building, but a living community of craft and memory—a place where generations of makers work side by side and where history is actively sustained through practice. This embedded identity made participation meaningful, as the festival’s theme— “Midas Touch” engaged with questions of value, transformation, and what society chooses to preserve or lose. Many artisans see their craft as part of resisting homogenization and maintaining a human pace of production and life.
Opportunity for creative collaboration with international artists
Artisans were motivated by the opportunity to collaborate with international artists and see their materials and skills engaged in novel, conceptually rich ways. For example, the creation of the distorted spoon for Ieva Kotryna Ski’s “Measuring Time with Coffee Spoons” project was not just a technical task but a co-creative exchange—integrating traditional metalwork into an artwork reflecting on time, modernity, and lived experience.
Integration of craft knowledge into contemporary conceptual artwork
Artists like Ieva intentionally reached out to the Han’s craftspeople because their practices expanded what could be created and thought about in the project. Working with metalworkers in the Han allowed fragments of local knowledge, technique, and material wisdom to inform contemporary art practices, generating outcomes that neither could achieve alone.
Alignment with festival values about visibility, community, and cultural identity
The festival’s overarching theme—the critical reflection on growth, value, and what it means to be seen or unseen in society—aligned with the artisans’ own experiences as makers who often operate outside mass-market channels. Their participation resonated with the festival’s intent to give voice to the overlooked, the vulnerable, and the unseen, which includes traditional crafts sustained away from mainstream commercial visibility.
Enhanced exposure through EU-supported cultural platforms
Being part of a Creative Europe–supported program and the parallel events of the Istanbul Biennial offered artisans broader visibility and intercultural exchange—connecting their work to an international arts network while deepening connections with other craftsmen, artists, and audiences.
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“Through the Mahalla Festival and the “Magic Carpets” residencies, we have discovered new ways to share our craft as a living cultural practice. The awarded support would allow us to expand workshops, artist–artisan collaborations, and community activities that sustain our crafts and reinforce Büyük Valide Han as a shared cultural space. We hope to continue to cooperate with the Mahalla Festival with future events that make visible the many layers of craft, memory, and meaning.” (Mert Onur, Industrial Designer)