Damla Kilickiran (b. 1991) is a Swedish-Turkish artist based in Oslo. Through sculpture, installation, as well as drawing and film, her practice reveals the symbolic, mystical, and affective potentials embedded in the materials that shape our everyday environments. With a profound sensitivity to materials, Kilickiran explores altered states of being as methods for image-production and knowledge. Her research examines how concepts such as magic, intuition, and spirit can operate within an increasingly mechanized society. Working with industrial substances such as asphalt, concrete, lead, aluminium, tin and polystyrene, she transforms them into vessels for embodied and esoteric inquiry.

On Sense and Glyphs grew out of Damla Kilickiran’s insight that the ruler—seemingly a neutral instrument—embodies rigid systems of measurement and value. Crafted using motifs from her drawings and produced in a psychographic state during hypnosis, Kilickiran’s curved rulers embody inner imagery rather than external logic, proposing a feminist gesture toward alternative ways of navigating the world. By creating tools based on the body rather than standardized systems, the work opens up the possibility for other ways of seeing and moving through space. On Sense and Glyphs is activated through site-specific drawings made with the rulers, forming an alternative geometry in which lines that would remain parallel in Euclidean geometry are allowed to meet.

The work is presented by Femtensesse at Basel Social Club, taking place June 14–20, 2026, where a vacant multi-story office building in central Basel is transformed into a temporary social stage for art during Art Basel week. Within the curatorial framework of this year’s edition, titled Office, Kilickiran will develop a new site-specific iteration of On Sense and Glyphs.

Born in Stockholm, her work has been featured in national and international exhibitions including Haugar kunstmuseum, Tønsberg (2026); Lunds konsthall (2024/2025); The 8th Yokohama Triennale (2024); Bergen Kunsthall (2022); Gothenburg International Biennale For Contemporary Art (2021); UKS, Oslo (2021); and Lofoten International Art Festival, Svolvær (2019). Commissioned by KORO – Public Art Norway, Kilickiran recently completed a public artwork for the façade of A-blokka, part of the new Government Quarter in Oslo. 2027 will see a solo exhibition by Kilickiran in one of the skylit galleries at Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo. Her work is incldued in the collections of Haugar kunstmuseum, Tønsberg, Stavanger Art Museum and The City of Oslo Art Collection.