For 20 Years, Turkish Media Star Vuslat Made Art in Secret. Now She’s on the Biennial Circuit
Turkish media executive Vuslat Doğan Sabancı—known professionally as Vuslat—made art privately for nearly 20 years while serving as chief executive of Hürriyet, Turkey’s largest newspaper, often working in her studio late into the night without exhibiting. Her first exhibition opened in 2022, and by summer 2026 her work had appeared in New York at the Conductor art fair as the room-sized installation House of Silence and in Rhodes, where dozens of her clay sculptures were installed in a medieval former Greek Orthodox church. Her first monograph, May We Meet in the Silence of Our Souls, was published by DISTANZ and the University of Chicago Press. Vuslat links her practice to themes of silence, listening, and the Turkish concept of “emanet” (something entrusted to one’s care), and she works across materials including marble, bronze, clay, felt, and electroplated plants.
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This story was covered in Scandals, Stolen Jewels, and Art’s Lasting Power