Artistic Research and Production Grant Program recipients

Salt, in collaboration with the BBVA Foundation, is pleased to announce the projects supported as part of the second edition of the Salt Artistic Research and Production Grant Program.

This year’s selection committee included Amanda de la Garza (Artistic Deputy Director, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía), Gilermo Zuaznabar (Chief Curator, Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao), Marina Otero Verzier (Architect-Researcher), Özge Ersoy (Senior Curator, Asia Art Archive), Laura Poderoso (Deputy Director, BBVA Foundation), and Deniz Ova (Executive Director, Salt).

After evaluating 210 applications, the committee awarded the Artistic Research Grant to Güneş Terkol for Layers of a Migration Story, and the Production Grant to Onur Gökmen for Subsoil. In their statement, the committee noted: “Terkol’s proposal stood out for its poetic and documentary depth, exceptional commitment to the research topic, and sophistication of its artistic approach. Gökmen’s investigation into scientific and environmental truths is both timely and significant, distinguished by its rigorous research and compelling artistic vision.”

A multidisciplinary project by Güneş Terkol in collaboration with her mother Elmira Terkol, Layers of a Migration Story traces a multi-stage migration from Russia to China, and eventually to Türkiye. Developed over two decades through interviews, archives, and collected objects, the research explores collective remembrance, resilience, and adaptation across shifting geographies. Reimagined through everyday practices and carriers of memory, the project centers on migration chests and their symbolic contents, bringing together oral testimonies, family narratives, and cultural materials to uncover layered histories embedded in personal and communal experience.

Subsoil revisits a largely overlooked episode in the environmental and institutional history of Türkiye: the detection of radioactive contamination in Black Sea tea following the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Drawing on research at Middle East Technical University, the project investigates how scientific findings are shaped, silenced, or dismissed within state institutions. Drawing on archival materials and narrative reconstruction, it traces the movement of radiation through natural and institutional systems, highlighting how environmental harm—though invisible and slow—can alter public health, policy, and collective memory.

Each artist will receive a grant of 20,000 EUR to support their projects. The resulting works will be presented at Salt in 2026. For more information: saltonline.org.

Founded in 2011 by Garanti BBVA, Salt is a not-for-profit cultural institution engaging in research, exhibitions, publications, web projects, and public programs at the intersections of visual practices, the built environment, social life, and economic history. The BBVA Foundation, as the corporate social responsibility of the BBVA Group, is committed to advancing society by promoting and disseminating knowledge through research-based, artistic, cultural, and scientific projects.