Derya Akay (Turkish, b. 1988) is an interdisciplinary artist who works, learns and gardens in Vancouver. Akay plays with the tension between preservation and decay, control and chance, trial and error. Their process-based artistic strategies allow them to embrace the realities of time and transformation on the organic materials they work with. Akay poeticizes the act of cooking, using it as a metaphor for their studio practice. In their collaborative cooking and gardening projects, Akay strives to create spaces for non-hierarchical, equally-shared labour.
