Deniz Yurtbay

Textile whisperer. Flower rebel. Transcontinental stitch witch.

Deniz Yurtbay doesn’t paint still lives, she paints lives still in motion. Born in Istanbul and forever floating between continents, Deniz weaves textiles, paint, and satire into works that migrate as much as their maker. Her practice challenges tidy metaphors and tidy borders, stitching rebellion into every thread.

At Lola, she’s showing three sly provocations disguised as floral daydreams. Rebel Root tears up the tired “women are flowers” trope, replacing it with a mutant bloom that bites back. Flight of Flora packs a plane with leafy passengers, asking what migration might look like if plants booked window seats. And Carrying Home With Me turns houses into wheel-bound ghosts — mobile memories for those who never really unpack.

Self-taught (but don’t let that fool you), Deniz brings a background in the textile industry and fashion houses from Istanbul to NYC. Her art fuses soft materials with sharp critique, often slipping political truths into poetic disguises. In workshops, she cultivates collective resistance, one stitch, one story, one unbothered smirk at a time.

When not making patriarchal metaphors nervous, she’s swimming between countries (literally), bingeing Turkish soap operas, or harmonizing with classical arias. Her favorite object? A floor rag. Her favorite magic? Making it all feel sacred.