
Saturday 8 March 2025 / 2 – 3.30 pm / Open Eye Gallery / RSVPÂ
Artist talk and in conversation with Eda Emirdag (Artist and Creative Producer), Liz Wewiora (Open Eye Gallery, Head of Social Practice/ Programme Leader for MA Art and Design, University of Salford), and Dr Helen McGhie (Senior Lecturer in Photography at the School of Digital Arts, Manchester Metropolitan University).
Eda Emirdag is a photographic artist and curator-producer from Istanbul, Turkey. Eda is undertaking an artist residency between Open Eye Gallery and University of Salford, and Islington Mill and Manchester Metropolitan University, to explore the international dialogue and practice of socially engaged photography.
For her residency here in the North West of England, she will be further developing an on-going body of work, Belly Button, an artistic research project that she conducted in Turkey between 2021 and 2024. In this project, the artist examines the effects of the beauty industry on the female body. She wants to discuss the effects of plastic surgery and the beauty industry on body politics. The visual material for the artwork continues to be collected and analysed in depth and will continue to be developed further in collaboration with students at University of Salford and Manchester Metropolitan University and young people from Open Eye Gallery’s socially engaged programme in Sefton, through a series of zine, game and collage workshops.
Open Eye Gallery is hosting a launch of the final zine and a digital window exhibition of a video essay produced by Eda and an artist talk as part of the Social Engaged Photography Network (SEPN) on Saturday 8th March.
In this event, Dr. Helen McGhie (MMU), Liz Wewiora (Open Eye Gallery / University of Salford) and Eda Emirdağ will come together for a conversation about the project and the residency’s wider aims of sharing international definitions around both socially engaged and 3rd sector collaborative photographic practice.
This programme is supported by British Council Turkey, and the SAHA foundation