Biography

Jiyan Céline (b. 1999) is a Kurdish-Swiss visual artist and photographer based in Zurich and Istanbul. Her work examines identity and resistance, focusing on how the personal and the collective are shaped through structures of power.

Her practice combines photography with narrative and research-based approaches. Moving between documentary and speculative modes, it engages with questions of identity, resistance, and political visibility shaped by colonial and state power structures. Through an intimate lens, her work repositions personal experience as a means of reclaiming silenced or fragmented narratives.

Initially trained as a psychiatric nurse, she later studied Visual Storytelling in the Camera Arts programme at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, graduating in 2025. She received the ST.ART Sponsorship Award for Emerging Talent in 2025 and the Photometria Photobook Award in 2026, and was nominated for Plat(t)form 2026 at Fotomuseum Winterthur. Her work is part of the collection of Fotostiftung Schweiz and has been exhibited at Kornhausforum in Bern and BULB 6000 in Lucerne, CH. Upcoming presentations are at the Photometria International Photography Festival in Ioannina, GR, and the Visual Arts International Festival 2026 (VAiF26) in Thessaloniki, GR.