Arzu Ozkal (she/her/ella) is a Turkish born, San Diego, California based artist, designer, and researcher. Ozkal's practice is committed to fostering collaboration and inclusivity while critically engaging with social and cultural issues.

Ozkal is a founding member of Home Affairs, an interdisciplinary art collective focusing on creative projects about a range of issues impacting women's lives. Since 2011, they have been working together with women from Turkey, Europe, and USA to design platforms of social exchange. Collective received their first design patent for their wheeled museum chair for children, ARTSIT.

RECENT PROJECTS
She recently completed SRS (Silk Road Songbook), a socially driven, interdisciplinary, multilingual project created in collaboration with Millie Chen.
Developed over eight years, the project weaves new songs into the land, amplifying distinct, independent voices along a major ancient Eurasian migration route while challenging Orientalist exoticism and cultural tourism. Its inaugural exhibition opened at Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, and the accompanying book, also titled SRS (Silk Road Songbook), was published by Minerva Press in New York.

MONOGRAPHS AND ARTIST EDITIONS 
Following the publication of Cabaret Voltaire: Fluxus West, San Diego and Southern California Mail Art, co-edited with Mila Waldeck and examining the International Mail Art Movement of the 1960s through Ferrara Brain Pan’s Cabaret Voltaire (a mail art project established in 1977 in San Diego), Ozkal was gifted the archives of mail artist Frank Ferguson (aka SirQ), spanning the 1960s–1980s and consisting of small publications and mail art. She has since shifted her focus to diving into this extensive archive.

Ozkal's limited edition series with Tricia Treacy, Situated Between (2017–2019), comprised three volumes and was a collaboration between creative practitioners, international authors, and academics in the field of histories and theories of art and design. It can be purchased at Printed Matter in NYC. Situated Between v.3 won the AIGA 50 Books / 50 Covers award in 2021.
 
She co-edited with Dr. Claudia Pederson, Gün: Women's Networks investigates informal networks and their extension into digital media with the aim of gaining understanding of the sociocultural conditions impacting women's participation in contemporary culture (2013). 
 
CURATORIAL PROJECTS
She has co-curated numerous international exhibitions, such as 17th Annual Dia de la Mujer Invisible Traditions (w/Katalina Silva) at The Front Arte & Cultura; We The People (w/Chantel Paul) for San Diego State University; Relief Valve / Subap (w/Nanette Yannuzzi) at New Agrarian Center and Oberlin College - George Jones Farm.

COMMUNITY SERVICE
She has served on the board of several nonprofits in San Diego, CA, including A Reason to Survive (ARTS), a National City-based art center dedicated to providing high-quality arts programming to South Bay youth (2020-2022); Art Produce, a community art and performance space in North Park (2022-2024); and as the education chair of AIGA San Diego Tijuana (2020-2022). Additionally, she has served as an advisor to San Diego Design Week since its inception in 2022.

She wholeheartedly supports the impactful work of these organizations and encourages others to contribute to their missions.