Awita New York Studio

Awita New York Studio is an artist-run gallery in Williamsburg founded by sculptor Gulsum Keskinoglu in 2023. The space hosts open-call group exhibitions and solo shows, prioritizing emerging and underrepresented artists with physical gallery space rather than digital platforms only.

Gulsum Keskinoglu trained as a sculptor in Turkey (first at Isparta Anatolian Fine Art High School, then in the studio of sculptor Tevfik Turen Karagozoglu) before landing in Williamsburg and opening Awita New York Studio in May 2023. The space runs on a simple, stubborn premise: that emerging and underrepresented artists deserve a real room to show in, not just a digital platform. Since opening, Keskinoglu has curated a rolling calendar of international open-call group exhibitions alongside solo show giveaways, workshops in jewelry wax-carving and figure drawing, and a companion digital publication, Awita New York Art Magazine, that extends the conversation off the walls. Her own work (sculpture, painting, ceramics, and handmade jewelry) keeps returning to the female body as a site of identity and self-determination. The studio is less a gallery in the traditional sense than a bet: that access and community-building are themselves a curatorial position.