Sibel Kocabasi

Sibel Kocabaşı is a multidisciplinary visual artist, working in painting, staged photography, and installations. Her art addresses contemporary social concerns from the deteriorating natural environment, migration and violence against women to the suppression of female identity and the recent awakening of feminine power. Sibel’s latest paintings carry an eternal connection with universal nature. She expresses art as a profound experience of a universal sense of creation.

Kocabaşı was born in northwest Turkiye and raised in Istanbul; she lives and works in South Florida, USA, and Istanbul, Turkiye. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Turkish Traditional Arts (rug-kilim design, natural dyes, conservation and restoration of textiles, and illumination of manuscripts) from the Marmara University of Fine Arts in Istanbul. She received her Master’s in Fine Arts (painting) from Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida. Kocabaşı is the recipient of the 2010 South Florida Cultural Consortium’s Visual and Media Artists Fellowship and the 2006 Hector Ubertalli Visual Arts Award.

Kocabaşı was invited to present a workshop on “Weaving, Textiles and Painting” at the Boca Raton Museum of Art, Florida. She has also been honored to have juried many visual art competitions. She has taught art at Florida Atlantic University, Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College, Palm Beach State College, Armory Art Center, Light House Art Center, and the Very Special Arts.

Her artwork is in numerous private collections as well as the Beth DeWoody Collection and The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum in Miami, Florida and has shown in national and international venues: including the 10th International Cairo Biennial, Tomio Koyama, Japan, the International Museum of Art and Science, McAllen, Texas, and Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts in Istanbul.