Isin Önol is a New York City based curator, writer, and art professor. She currently works as the Director of the Curatorial Research at School of Visual Arts, MA Curatorial Practice Program. Since 2009 she has been working independently, producing exhibitions, conferences, public programs, and community-engaging projects across Europe, South and East Asia, the Middle East, as well as the Americas. Before that, she led the Elgiz Museum of Contemporary Art Istanbul as its director and curator (2006-2009).

Her curatorial research focuses on interconnecting archival information with oral histories to create platforms for collective memory through collaborative art practices. She has produced more than 60 exhibitions internationally, and published on the intersection of social justice and art. Her recent exhibitions include Bilgé: Lifespan of a Horizontal Line (New York), Zip Code Memory Project: Practices of Justice and Repair (New York), The Wondrous Deposits of Unfinished Threads (Sinop), A Knot in the Throat: Foraging for a Vanishing Present (Vienna), Thinking Food Futures (New York), Women Mobilizing Memory (Istanbul, Vienna, New York, Madrid), and When Home Won’t Let You Stay (Vienna). She co-curated Sinopale, the International Sinop Biennial in 2012, 2014 and 2021.

She served as a guest professor, critic, and curator at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna (2022-2023 and 2016-2017), as well as at Montclair State University (2017-2022), and as a research scholar at the Center for the Study of Social Difference at Columbia University. (2016-2020). Önol co-founded and directs the Nesin Art Village, an independent art school in Turkey. Önol holds an MFA from Sabanci University, Istanbul, an MAS from Zürich University of the Arts, and is a PhD candidate at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. She is a member of the IKT International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art and has been elected twice to the Board of Directors of the Roberto Cimetta Fund, which supports the mobility of artists in the Mediterranean region.