BIOGRAPHY
Sibel Kocabasi is a multidisciplinary visual artist, working in painting, staged photography, and installations. Her art addresses contemporary social concerns: from the deteriorating natural environment, migration, violence against women, across cultures, including the suppression of female identity and the recent awakening of feminine power and confidence. In her artworks, she utilizes diverse media: such as traditional rugs, found objects, emergency survival blankets, and fibers.
Her recent paintings carry an eternal connection with universal nature.
Kocabasi was born in northwest Turkey and raised in Istanbul; she lives and works in South Florida, USA, and Istanbul, Turkey. 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 degree (painting) from Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida, in 2005.
Kocabasi is the recipient of the 2010 South Florida Cultural Consortium’s Visual and Media Artists Fellowship and the 2006 Hector Ubertalli Visual Arts Award.
As an artist, Kocabasi was selected to talk and 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 ten years of teaching experience in visual arts; she taught art at 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. Her artwork has been exhibited in national and international venues: including the 10th International Cairo Biennial, Tomio Koyama, Japan, International Museum of Art and Science, McAllen, Texas, and Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts, Istanbul, Turkey.