Denef Khuwaj is a visual artist of Abkhaz-Adyghe origin, based in Istanbul. Her practice explores questions of belonging and identity — personal, cultural, and diasporic. Her work engages with memory, inner landscapes, and the experience of existing between familiarity and otherness.

The exhibition The Garden Within Me is a metaphorical journey into the inner worlds each person carries within. The garden becomes an image of memory and roots that continue to live in us, even when we find ourselves far from home.The project grows out of experiences of separation, fragmentation, and life as a minority — from the desire to gather scattered parts of the self and find inner wholeness. The exhibition features photographs and an installation that preserve traces of this journey — between memory, silence, and the self.