Tuba Kılıç ~ Keywords: collective study, pedagogy, food politics, embodied knowledge, refusal, adaptability, togetherness, cultural workers unite, anti-colonial education, learning environments, memory, solidarity, political resistance, communal care, kitchen as classroom, fugitive study, relational knowledge, lifelong learning

Tuba Kılıç is an Istanbul-born and Rotterdam-based artist, chef, and cultural worker who practices collective study through food, writing, gestures, and everyday acts. She approaches these materials as pedagogical and political tools—carriers of memory, solidarities, and struggles.

Her professional journey has been shaped by over a decade of layered experiences across diverse fields of study and labor. She studied at three different universities and earned two bachelor’s degrees, all while maintaining an intensive work life alongside her studies. During this time, she held roles as a graphic designer, photographer, videographer, art handler, artist assistant, and chef—moving fluidly between cultural institutions, kitchen spaces, and artistic projects. These experiences deepened her capacities for adaptability, collaboration, and creative navigation and initiative, grounding her understanding of work as a form of learning.

After completing her second bachelor’s degree at the Willem de Kooning Academy, she joined the institution as a tutor, working alongside Nash Caldera. This marked a turning point in her trajectory, as she began to identify primarily as an educator—committed to cultivating pedagogical approaches grounded in learning together, dissolving the boundaries between student and teacher, with the same attentiveness she brings to all aspects of her practice.

At the Dutch Art Institute, she studied for two years in the HTDTWT classes Anticolonial Acts and Weapon of Theory under the guidance of Hypatia Vourloumis, and participated in the COOP study groups Assembling Land and Living Room: Rehearsals Towards Place-Making, facilitated by Noor Abuarafeh and Marina Christodoulidou in collaboration with De Appel.

Looking ahead, she remains committed to working as a cultural worker grounded in education and lifelong learning. Her aim is to continue creating spaces where learning unfolds collectively—beyond the confines of fixed roles or institutional hierarchies. She envisions a pedagogy that moves through households, kitchens, streets, stadiums, parks, studios, and classrooms: a mobile archive of shared study that resists finality. Her work seeks not mastery but relation, not outcomes but openings—committed to being a lifelong teacher to her students, and a lifelong student to those she studies with.

*Learn more about Tuba Kılıç' 20 minute performance We Stick Together for CHOREIA ~ DAI's Aeroponic Acts 2025 at Centrale Fies in Italy. 

*Learn more about Tuba Kılıç' written MA thesis (DAI, 2025): Pedagogy’s Pathways: On Togetherness, Adaptability and Refusal

*During their journey with DAI, Tuba Kılıç made significant contributions to: COOP Summit 2024 ~ Assembling Land: Rehearsals towards Place-making as well as COOP Summit 2025 ~ to live by ear, and the eye will follow

*Tuba Kılıç was an esteemed 2024-2025 member of the DAI's COUNCIL

*Follow Tubas's 'Life after DAI' via instagram