Join us for the opening reception of Dilge Dilsiz’s solo exhibition, created during her artist residency at New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park.

This new body of work considers what happens when a contemporary body encounters the physical residues of New Bedford’s rich history. Through long-exposure photography and immersive light installation, Dilsiz explores belonging, memory, and how a landscape holds history long after the bodies that shaped it are gone.

About the Exhibition Moving through four distinct key sites—the working waterfront, Fort Taber, former textile mills, and the hurricane barrier—the collection traces New Bedford’s evolution across land, water, labor, and history.

Within the photographs, long exposures allow figures to dissolve into net, stone, brick, and water—blurring the line where the body ends and the landscape begins. Inside the gallery, lantern light and metallic prints respond directly to the viewer’s movement, referencing New Bedford’s legacy as “the city that lit the world” through whale oil illumination.

About the Artist

Dilge Dilsiz is a Turkish interdisciplinary artist based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and an Assistant Professor of Graphic + Experience Design at Miami University. Working across photography, installation, performance, poetry, design, and new media, her collaborative practice examines identity, memory, and belonging. She holds an MFA from Stony Brook University and dual bachelor’s degrees in Studio Art and Psychology (minor in Architectural Studies) from Lafayette College. Her work has been exhibited across the United States and Europe, supported by residencies including Live Art Ireland and the New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park.