From Arizona to Türkiye to Australia, Ozlem Yeni Expands a Vision of Home Through International Art and Cultural Exchange

The artist’s summer travels are informing a growing international network and a developing residency initiative rooted in community, cultural memory, and connection. The artist’s summer travels are informing a growing international network and a developing residency initiative rooted in community, cultural memory, and connection.

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PHOENIX, AZ (September 10, 2026) — For artist Ozlem Yeni (ozlemyeni.com), home has never been defined by a single place. Her artistic practice has long explored memory, migration, identity, belonging, and the experience of living between places. This summer, those themes took on new dimensions as Yeni traveled through Türkiye and Australia, reconnecting with artists and creative communities while developing new work, exploring international collaborations and continuing to build Welcome Home, the mobile artist platform and curatorial initiative she co-founded with filmmaker Chris Agnese.

Launched in Phoenix in June 2026, Welcome Home was conceived as an evolving, community-centered platform rather than a permanent physical space. Through immersive exhibitions, workshops, storytelling, and cross-cultural artistic exchange, the initiative seeks to create opportunities for artists and communities to explore how memory, identity, and shared experience shape our understanding of home.

Now, Yeni's travels are beginning to extend that vision beyond Arizona. Türkiye was a particularly meaningful part of Yeni's summer journey. Along with publishing her poetry book, FRAGILE, she visited galleries and museums and reconnected with artists and members of the creative community connected to her earlier artistic life.

Among the most significant experiences was the Arnica Art Land residency in Edirne, where Yeni spent a week working alongside artists with diverse practices. The residency became an opportunity to make, share, and learn, and resulted in the creation of The Bearers of Memory, a new work that will continue its journey in February 2027 with a planned exhibition at Istanbul Atatürk Cultural Center (AKM).

The experience also strengthened Yeni's connections within Türkiye's arts community. While in Ankara, she met with Prof. Dr. İsa Eliri, President of GESAM (Türkiye Fine Arts Owners Professional Association), of which Yeni is a member. The two discussed possibilities for future projects and collaboration, creating another connection between Yeni's longstanding relationships in Türkiye and the international work she is developing through her own practice and Welcome Home.

The Arnica experience has also raised a larger question for Yeni: how can artists move beyond simply documenting communities and instead develop meaningful creative relationships with them? That question is helping shape the next phase of Welcome Home.

Through Welcome Home, Yeni and Agnese are currently developing the concept for the Welcome Home International Residency, an artist-led, community-based initiative envisioned as a long-term program connecting international and Arizona-based artists with local communities through art, cultural exchange, storytelling, and shared memory.

The project remains in its early conceptual and partnership-building stage, with Yeni and Agnese currently exploring Superior, Arizona, as a potential location for the inaugural residency. Rather than bringing artists into a community with predetermined projects, the proposed residency would ask artists to begin by listening. Artists would meet residents, learn local histories, and develop creative work through those relationships, creating work with the community rather than simply about it.

A central component of the proposed initiative is the Superior Archive, envisioned as a growing physical and digital collection of community stories, photographs, interviews, films, artworks, family histories, and other forms of cultural memory. Each future residency could contribute another layer to the archive, creating an evolving record of the community through the perspectives of both residents and visiting artists.

The broader vision is to eventually develop the residency into an annual international program that connects Superior with artists and cultural organizations beyond Arizona while supporting arts education, intergenerational dialogue, local cultural preservation, and community-based creative exchange. 

That philosophy is already informing Yeni's international conversations. While in Australia, she began conversations with galleries and arts organizations in Melbourne, Gold Coast, and Ballarat about potential collaborations and future events through the Welcome Home artist platform. The conversations are still in their early stages, but for Yeni, their emergence feels like a natural extension of the platform's original purpose. 

“Welcome Home grew from ideas around migration, memory, belonging and the experience of living between places,” says Yeni. “As I travel and reconnect with artists and communities, I'm seeing how those ideas can create new relationships and possibilities for the platform. The work doesn't have to stay in one place. In fact, I think its strength comes from allowing it to move.” 

The summer also brought another significant milestone for Yeni with her recognition as a Certified Artist. The CertifiedArtist designation verifies creative work according to the organization's Human Creation Standard, intended to demonstrate that work was created through genuine human creativity rather than solely through artificial intelligence. The certification is designed to foster trust and transparency between creators and their audiences. The recognition arrives at a particularly relevant moment in Yeni's practice, which places human experience, tactile processes, personal archives, and traditional artistic techniques at its center.

Those principles were evident in the inaugural Welcome Home exhibition in Phoenix, where Yeni's evolving textile work LIFE transformed photographs from her own life into a woven archive exploring memory, migration, identity and human connection. Inspired by traditional kilim and basket weaving techniques, the work was woven live throughout the exhibition, allowing the piece and its relationship with the audience to continue evolving in real time. For Yeni, the human element is not simply part of the process. It is the point.

“I don't think Welcome Home is about finding one place and calling it home,” says Yeni. “It's about what happens when we create connection wherever we are, when we listen to each other, share our stories and make something together. That is where home begins.”

The international relationships and experiences developed throughout the summer are now informing what comes next for Welcome Home. Welcome Home 2: The Bodies We Inhabit is planned for early 2027, continuing the platform's exploration of identity, memory, embodiment and belonging.

Meanwhile, conversations surrounding future programming, international partnerships and the proposed Welcome Home International Residency continue to develop. What began in Phoenix is increasingly becoming a platform without a fixed geographic boundary, one capable of carrying stories, artistic practices and questions about belonging from Arizona to Türkiye, Australia and potentially far beyond.

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To learn more about Ozlem Yeni, visit ozlemyeni.com.