messengers, Istanbul
(work in progress)
Building on the intricate maritime links between the Red Sea, Black Sea, Mediterranean, and Marmara regions, the ongoing research project Messengers traces a continuum of geopolitical and cultural spheres shaped by the overlapping legacies of the Ottoman, Russian, and French empires and their successor states. Messengers draws inspiration from Messageries Maritimes, the French steamship company that, throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, facilitated the circulation of people, correspondence, and goods across this axis. Its maritime network serves as a lens to consider how infrastructures of mobility also carry ideas, ideologies, aesthetics, value systems, and cultural practices—messages conditioned by powers and systems that regulate their flow. While critically revisiting these histories, Baydal’s approach aims to bring to light submerged perspectives often overlooked within them.
open studio
June 3rd 2025, 19:00, at SAYE KOLEKTIF KAMPÜS
An 1889 map, preserved at the Bibliothèque nationale de France and depicting the Messageries Maritimes steamship routes across the Mediterranean and Black Sea, serves as a starting point for Sasha Baydal’s open studio. Used as a conceptual anchor, the map invites reflection on both the visible and invisible networks it traces, as well as the multiple dynamics that underscore them—those shaped by imperial influences, human mobilities, and cultural entanglements. A series of modified maps, which will be presented alongside conversations, artworks, and excerpts from texts, will open up a space for a re-reading of these histories, tracing lines of connection along the Black Sea, Mediterranean, Marmara, and Red Sea—and extending outward toward Central Asia.
Modified image of an 1889 map of the Messageries Maritimes Routes. From the archive of the Bibliothèque nationale de France
SASHA BAYDAL
Sasha Baydal (they/he) identifies as an interdependent art worker and Eastern European kvir. Their practice as a researcher and curator centers on experiences of displacement and diasporization, the cultural memory of the socialist past and memory loss, as well as their family history shaped by diverse forms of mobility. Their work is informed by postcolonial and queer theory, alongside decolonial approaches, and involves daily efforts in recollection, remembrance, and decolonization.
Since 2014, Sasha has collaborated with institutions such as the Centre Pompidou, Palais de Tokyo, Cité internationale des arts, and Kadist in Paris; HISK in Ghent; Mudam Luxembourg; Triangle-Astérides in Marseille; Capc Museum in Bordeaux; Lviv Municipal Art Center; Pickle Bar by Slavs and Tatars in Berlin; Künstler*innenhaus Büchsenhausen in Innsbruck; among others. Their contributions span exhibitions, lectures, workshops, discursive programs, performances, workshops, and writing. In 2021, they co-founded Beyond the post-soviet (Btps), a collective dedicated to producing and sharing knowledge about the cultural and geographical regions previously referred to as "post-soviet" and "post-socialist."
Sasha’s recent activities include co-curating, alongside Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez, the ongoing itinerant exhibition Displacements and Torrents—Where the Dnipro and the Elbe Meet, participating in the itinerant exhibition Borders Are Nocturnal Animals / Sienos yra naktiniai gyvūnai (curated by Neringa Bumblienė and Émilie Villez) as a member of Btps, and contributing to "After the End. The Forum on Imagining with Others" at the Palais de Tokyo. They are currently co-curating, with Chantal Pontbriand, the upcoming edition of SPHERE(S), set to be presented in Montréal in 2026.