Artist
Ceyda Oskay
Ceyda Oskay is an artist, humanitarian consultant, and fashion and textiles designer. Her work, spanning various media and locations, is often experimental and frequently about migration and place. Much of her practice revolves around how we are transformed through travel, interactions, sleep, chance encounters, dialogues, and clothes. She obtained an MA at the Royal College of Art (Public Sphere — Contemporary Art Practice) and a BA from the University of Chicago, and worked for the United Nations for over ten years before returning to art. She runs her own fashion brand, cc by co (custom clothing by ceyda oskay). Textiles are especially important to her practice for their link to migration — often being the few items light enough to carry on journeys, and important as markers of memory and the body. She has exhibited in London, India, Iceland, the USA, Kuwait, and Turkey.
Visit websiteAbout the Work
Sleepdust by Ceyda Oskay is a tender and surprising audio project that captures lullabies sung by Uber drivers in London during March 2019. Oskay, recognizing the car as a liminal space between public and private, asked her drivers — many of whom are immigrants — to share lullabies from their homelands. The resulting compilation is a remarkable portrait of London's cultural diversity, told through the most intimate of musical forms. Each driver's lullaby carries the weight of displacement, nostalgia, and the desire to preserve a piece of home in a foreign city. Sleepdust transforms the mundane experience of a ride-share into an encounter with deep human connection.