What is a Secant?
A secant is a straight line that intersects a curve at two distinct points. Unlike a tangent, which only touches a curve at one point, a secant passes through it, creating a CONNECTION between separate locations on the same form.
Geometrically, a secant reveals relationships that are not immediately visible. By linking two distant points, it defines a new line, a new direction, and A NEW PERSPECTIVE on the shape it crosses. It is neither contained by the curve nor external to it; it exists through the act of INTERSECTION.
method
Secant Space accompanies projects from their early stages of development through to their realization.
Projects are approached through reading, questioning, clarification, and close attention to detail. Grounded in context, this approach seeks to understand each project’s internal logic, its tensions, and its wider implications through dialogue with those involved.
Curatorial work is understood as a process of inquiry, driven by a sustained curiosity for artistic practices and a desire to understand the questions they reveal, question, or make possible. It develops through attentive listening to the artist’s reflections, the particularities of a place, and the different audiences with whom a project enters into dialogue.
At times, this work extends beyond Secant Space’s own programme, when a shared ground for collaboration exists.
CONTEXT
Secant Space is a curatorial platform and art residency for people active in the art, cultural, and research fields. It is open to both established and emerging artists, curators, and researchers, with a particular interest in research-based or long-term projects.
Secant Space is committed to creating the intellectual, material, and temporal conditions necessary for artistic research and production to unfold. It offers a working environment shaped by attention, care, and time, conducive to reflection, exchange, and engagement with the city of Istanbul.
Secant Space is a shared space. More broadly, it seeks to build a network of meaningful human connections. The notion of the “local” is treated as relational, shaped through encounters, exchanges, and collaborations across contexts.
origins
These early projects took shape through close collaboration with artists and the broader team, with particular attention to the sites where they unfolded. This dialogue between space, history, and collective practice laid the foundations on which Secant Space was built.
Laténium Estival, 2021
Vivement demain!, 2023 Open-Air Contemporary Art Triennial
Vertigo, Simon Deppierraz, Oblique Gallery, 2022
Heresies, 2021
Boulevard des Champs, 2017, Belluard Bollwerk International
17-71 Line, 2017, Les Créatives, in Pipilotti Rist’s Rose Monochrome