Board of governors

Nurgül Balaç

Faculty Representative and Internal Governor

Nurgul Balaç is an artist with an interdisciplinary practice, and a third year PhD student in Adult Learning at Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary.

She has an active individual practice of disciplines and media including porcelain, installation, handmade paper, printmaking, three-dimensional pieces, and more recently socially engaged and collaborative projects. Her work is social, political, and personal with a focus on issues of immigration, diasporas, borders and cultures. She explores becoming a diasporic individual during identity formation within a new culture.

Nurgül settled in Calgary in 2009 after many nomadic years of living in Turkey, the United States and Spain with her family. She currently lives in Calgary making, writing, researching, teaching, collaborating and always learning.

She received a Visual Arts and New Media individual project grant from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts in 2018, Calgary Arts Development Individual Art Project and Canada Council for the Arts. She holds an MFA from the University of Calgary, and she completed a residency program at Medalta in Medicine Hat and another at AUArts in Calgary, Calgary Allied Alberta Foundation Residency, Esplanade Artists in Residency. Her work is seen in Remai Modern, borderLINE: 2020 Biennial of Contemporary Art, and Esplanade Arts and Heritage Museum, Landed.