Team
Prof. Dr. Mona Mahall
Mona Mahall works across spatial and textual practices, in close collaboration with Asli Serbest. Her conceptual and research-based work engages with architectural and urban histories/futures to rethink contemporary modes of spatial production and the power relations that shape them. Informed by feminist perspectives, this collaborative practice resists fixed forms and instead unfolds through variation, shifts in scale, and processes of translation across physical and digital environments. By reclaiming marginalized, forgotten, or rejected knowledges, Mahall and Serbest explore alternative ways of organizing our lives, institutions, and online and offline movements, often through projects situated in sites shaped by transcultural urban histories.
Serbest/Mahall exhibit and publish internationally, including at the Kunsthalle Osnabrück, Yunt Istanbul, Pera Museum Istanbul, Biennale di Venezia, Ural Biennial, Kunstraum Kreuzberg/ Bethanien Berlin, Riverrun Istanbul, Württembergische Kunstverein Stuttgart, Pinakothek der Moderne Munich, Storefront for Art and Architecture New York, HKW Berlin, Vancouver Art Gallery, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, New Museum New York; in e-flux journal, Volume Magazine, Perspecta, Istanbul Art News, etc.
They are the editors of the independent magazine Junk Jet.
In 2019, they curated the 7th International Sinop Biennial under the title of "A Politics of Location."
(Staff members are listed in alphabetical order by their last name)
Arijit Bhattacharyya, MFA and MVA
Arijit Bhattacharyya is a multidisciplinary artist. In recent years, he has been working on alternative timelines of plant-human interdependent mutations. Within these imagined temporalities, Arijit engages with real-world right-wing propaganda, nationalism, political incarcerations, hate speech, and legitimised state-sponsored violence. For this work, the artist has collaborated with activists, citizen journalists, and independent journalists, often developing publications and videos to form counter-narratives.
His selected solo exhibitions include A Handful of Truths in a Mouthful of Lies, Künstlerhof Frohnau and Berliner Programm Künstlerische Forschung, Berlin; Whispering Sea, Artlink, Fort Dunree; Sea of Forests, ChertLüdde, Berlin; and From Forests We Are and Forests We Will Be, Kunstverein Braunschweig. Some of Arijit’s recent and upcoming institutional group exhibitions include KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen; Onomatopee Eindhoven; First Pontianak Biennale, Pontianak; Maxim Gorki Theatre, Berlin; Goethe National Museum, Weimar; and Casa di Goethe, Rome.
He has been an artist in residence at The International Artists’ Studio Program (IASPIS), Stockholm; PACT, Zollverein, Essen; The Nordic Art Association, Stockholm; Photo Kathmandu International Residency, Kathmandu; and Khoj International Artist Association, New Delhi, to name a few.
Since 2024, he has been a research associate at the Professur Darstellungsmethodik im Entwerfen / Practices and Politics of Representation. He is an alumnus of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and the Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda.
Yelta Köm, M.A.
Yelta Köm is an architect, artist and research associate at the Professur Darstellungsmethodik im Entwerfen / Practices and Politics of Representation, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, where he is pursuing a doctorate on critical representation practices around the Ilısu Dam, Hasankeyf and the Tigris region.
He studied architecture at Yıldız Technical University in Istanbul andat the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. From 2019 to 2022 he was a researcher on the ERC project Topological Atlas / Border Topologies at TU Delft and Goldsmiths, University of London. His teaching and research focus on counter-mapping and critical cartography, the politics of spatial representation and infrastructure, exhibition architecture, migration and ecology. In 2018 he was associate curator of Vardiya / The Shift, the Pavilion of Türkiye at the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale. He is a co-founder of Herkes İçin Mimarlık / Architecture for All, a non-profit collective for collaborative architecture active across Turkey since 2011, and a member of Arazi Assembly. His work has been shown at the Venice Biennale, the Chicago Architecture Biennial, the Istanbul Biennial, the Victoria and Albert Museum, MAXXI, nGbK, SALT and the Pera Museum.
He has lectured at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, the Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien and IASPIS, among others.
Lea Maria Wittich, MFA
Lea Maria Wittich explores questions of social and ecological justice in the coexistence of human and non-human agents through conceptual, collaborative and research-oriented works. Seeking for spatial and embodied expressions between analysis, empathy and irony, she is working with a diverse range of media, including text, clothing, objects, graphics, film and performance. As an alumna from the Institute of Experimental Fashion and Textile Design at UdK Berlin and the MFA Public Art and New Artistic Strategies, currently pursuing her practice-based PhD in Art and Design, her work attempts to blur disciplinary boundaries. Her involvement in curatorial projects and educational contexts equally informs her practice.
Since 2023, she has been a research associate at the Professur Darstellungsmethodik im Entwerfen / Practices and Politics of Representation. She was part of group exhibitions in Finland, Germany, Italy and Thailand; held research scholarships from the Deutsche Künstlerbund and Klassik Stiftung Weimar and essays of her were included in several book projects.
Dr.-Ing. Sabine Zierold
Dr. Sabine Zierold is an architect and research associate at the Chair Darstellungsmethodik im Entwerfen / Practices and Politics of Representation, Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. She earned her Ph.D. in Weimar with a dissertation on “The Medial Space of Architecture.” From 2005 to 2022, she served as spokesperson and coordinator for the MediaArchitecture master’s degree program at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. She studied at University of Technology Dresden and ETH Zürich and earned her degree in architecture from Technical University of Munich. Her teaching and research focus on the intersection of architecture and its media, virtual architectural spaces, methods of architectural representation, and the introduction to spatial design and planning in architecture and urban planning programs. Specific skills include environmental perception, freehand drawing and watercolor painting. She has presented lectures and participated in international conferences both in Germany and abroad, including in Weimar, Buffalo, Plymouth, Wuhan, and Peking and has been involved as a curator, exhibitor, and author in a wide variety of exhibitions and publications.