On Friday 25 June 2021 our Girl Friday Breakfast Club speaker will be visual artist, curator and educator, Esen Salma Kaya. Join us online on Friday 25 June at 8.30am (GMT) by booking here.

Esen Kaya is a Pakistan born visual artist, curator and educator who has worked in the arts and cultural sector for more than twenty years. Graduating with a 1st class honours degree in Fine Art Sculpture, she works across drawing, painting, embroidery, sculpture and installation. 

Esen has worked in museums and galleries across the UK including Newlyn Art Gallery, The National Glass Centre and is currently Gallery Curator at Aga Khan Centre Gallery for Aga Khan Development Network.  She has curated over 130 exhibitions of work by regional, national and international artists including projects with James Turrell, Antony Gormley and Tania Kovats. 

In 2014 Esen founded DRAWING - a programme of exhibitions and events in partnership with North East’s Universities and 35 partner organisations across Northeast England, funded by Arts Council England from 2014-2019.  Esen was awarded an Honorary Visiting Research Fellowship at University of Sunderland 2016-2019. She is currently developing DRAWING as an online gallery. 

Some of Esen’s exhibitions have been unconventional, at times ambitiously community led. In 2009, she curated the exemplary Casting Off…A Coat for a Boat which toured venues around the UK including London Olympia for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee in 2012. She was lead curator for Arts Council England’s national touring project Follow The Herring in 2013/14, working with 13 arts and cultural venues along the East Coast of England and Scotland. She was lead engagement curator for the National Trust’s Souter Lighthouse flagship project Foghorn Requiem in 2013 funded by Arts Council England strategic fund. 

While Esen’s career has largely involved curating and engagement delivery, she has spent the past few years developing her own fine art practice. She is interested in themes around hybridity, migration and stories around her cultural heritage. She is inspired by the poetics of language, space, everyday objects as well as the romantic synergy between Eastern & Western cultures. Drawing and craft play an important role especially embroidery; a skill she learnt from her mother and cultural background. Esen has exhibited her work in many group exhibitions both in the UK and internationally. In 2016, for the exhibition Wordsworth and Bashō: Walking Poets in Kyoto, Japan, Esen was commissioned to make a deconstructed embroidered kimono that examined the art and poetry of both William Wordsworth and Matuso Bashō. In 2019 she exhibited drawings in Making The Postcard Women’s Imaginarium exhibition at Wilsden Gallery, London and was part of online exhibition Carpet Pages III curated by Vaishali Prazmari in 2020.  Esen is currently working towards a solo exhibition in 2022.

The Girl Friday Breakfast Club was established by Kate Reynolds and Anita Taylor in 2018 to provide a friendly and informal space for women to meet and to hear from an interesting woman speaker, eat breakfast and drink great coffee or tea together at Drawing Projects UK on the last Friday of each month. We held our first online Girl Friday in October 2020 after realising we had longer to go before we could gather again for breakfast due to lockdown. We aim to retain the informal format, and events are not recorded, so do book to join in - and bring your own breakfast - or lunch or supper depending on where you are in the world!

All women, and those who identify as women, are very welcome to join the Girl Friday Breakfast Club.

Please note: We send the Zoom link to registered participants by email in advance of the event, and a reminder with the Zoom link is also automatically sent by email 50 minutes before the event starts. Please check all of your email inboxes!

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