Mediha Didem Türemen

Mediha Didem Türemen — Biography

Mediha Didem Türemen is a versatile Turkish artist who takes part in international biennials with her engravings and photographs and works in film as a production designer, art director, actress and producer. Her woodcut Homage to Albrecht Dürer is in the permanent collection of the Albertina Museum in Vienna, and in December 2024 she received an award at the Peru Biennial.

While studying international relations at the Faculty of Political Sciences of Istanbul University she turned to acting through the faculty's theatre group; she did postgraduate study at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University. She entered cinema as production designer of Selim Evci's first film İki Çizgi (Two Lines), which competed in the Venice Critics' Week. In Evci's Rüzgarlar (2012) she played Eleni and served as art director; she was art director of Saklı (2015), for which she was nominated for Best Art Director at the Golden Orange. She also worked as executive producer of Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Kuru Otlar Üstüne (About Dry Grasses).

In 2013 she won the Lorenzo il Magnifico award in the works-on-paper category at the IX Florence Biennale. In 2014 her photograph Where is Venice? earned an invitation from the Rome Triennale, and her engravings entered museum collections in Bulgaria, Macedonia, Portugal and Istanbul. The work that entered the Albertina in 2016 made her the third Turkish artist in the collection after Burhan Doğançay and Sarkis. In 2023 she became the first Turkish artist to be included in the Arctic World Archive with a documentary.