Özlem Çelik, Illustrator

I have been drawing since I first held a crayon. For nearly three decades, art journalling and illustration came and went in my life—until, over the past five years, they settled into a daily practice. Since then, I have been drawing almost every day, as an art and travel journalist of my own life. 

While based in Finland, I am inspired by multiple geographies—especially the blue of the Mediterranean Sea, the Greek islands, and the colourful corners of cities, from Estonian streets to southern coastal landscapes. 

Özlem Çelik (b. 1979) is an illustrator and researcher raised in Turkey and based in Finland. She is currently a Collegium Fellow at the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies, working in the field of urban studies with a focus on housing, urban activism, and the political economy of cities. Alongside her academic work, she has developed a long-standing illustration practice centred on everyday life and personal observation.

While she has taken part in group exhibitions, Mahrem is her first solo exhibition. Over the years, she has pursued various trainings, courses, and workshops ranging from classical drawing to contemporary illustration. In the past six years, keeping an art journal has gradually evolved from a hobby into a daily practice.

Her drawings are created primarily in small notebooks, often on location in cafés, public transport, parks, and other shared spaces. Working directly in ink—without preliminary sketches—and layering watercolor, aquarelle pencils, or pastels, she captures fleeting moments as they unfold, translating observation into intimate visual narratives. Her work reflects on presence, memory, and the quiet textures of daily life.

The exhibition is titled Mahrem — a Turkish word meaning private, intimate, or confidential (in Finnish: yksityinen). It gestures toward a quiet tension at the heart of her practice: drawing in public spaces while holding onto a deeply personal way of seeing. What is shared here is not spectacle, but closeness—moments, feelings, and fragments of everyday life. These works move between what is seen and what is felt, inviting viewers into a space that is both open and intimate, like entering someone’s journal.

Moving between research and artistic practice, Çelik is interested in how knowledge, memory, and lived experience are produced and shared. This exhibition can be seen as an open art journal: a space where the ordinary becomes visible, and where intimacy is gently offered rather than declared—an invitation to slow down, to notice, and to see differently.

🗓 Exhibition: 1–31 May 2026 🎉 Opening: 2 May 2026, 16:00 📍 Location: Sörkan Ruusu, Pääskylänrinne 3, 00500 Helsinki