dearly Loved friends: Photographs by Sheyla Baykal, 1965-1990

Soft Network is honored to present dearly Loved friends: Photographs by Sheyla Baykal, 1965-1990 curated by Marcelo Gabriel Yáñez with Penny Arcade. The exhibition serves as an introduction to the life and photographic practice of Turkish-American artist Sheyla Baykal (1944-1997) and is composed of a mixture of black and white prints, projections of 35mm color slide photography and super 8mm films, and archival material from the artist’s estate. Taking its title from a folder of obituaries for deceased friends that Baykal kept between the 1960s and 1990s, the exhibition emphasizes her community-based approach to portraiture. Recurring subjects include John Eric Broaddus, Jackie Curtis, Candy Darling, Peter Hujar, Agosto Machado, Cookie Mueller, Jack Smith, and Paul Thek. While well-known within her lifetime among a tight-knit coterie of East Village artists, Baykal’s work was rarely printed or shown.

This exhibition, which marks the first six months of the Estate of Sheyla Baykal as Soft Network’s 2025-2027 Archive in Residence, is also Baykal’s first solo exhibition since 1993. A second exhibition will be mounted in April 2026. During the residency, Baykal’s expansive archive is being organized and cataloged for the first time. Digitization, ongoing research, and public programs with artists and scholars familiar with Baykal’s community will ensure that Baykal’s material, and the subjects within, remain accessible for further study.

Related Public Programs

April 22nd, 6:30 PM

A conversation with Penny Arcade, Agosto Machado, and Steve Turtell on their memories of Sheyla Baykal, her photographs, and her theatrical productions like the Palm Casino Revue. Moderated by Allen Frame.

May 6th, 6:30 PM

Eloise Harris, Mary Lou Harris and Nicholas Martin, Curator for the Arts and Humanities, NYU Special Collections, on the Angels of Light.

RSVP required for all programs

Email: info@softnetwork.art

Sheyla Baykal (1944-1997) was born in Cambridge, MA to a Turkish father and Italian-Canadian mother. From age three to eleven she attended school in Turkey before her family relocated to Calgary, Canada. In 1962, at the age of eighteen, Baykal ran away from home to live in New York. Between 1964 and 1968, Baykal worked as a couture fashion model for the Ford Modeling Agency while simultaneously developing her own independent photographic practice. In addition to her work as an artist, Baykal was known for her generous communal living experiments, as well as a passion for housing rights, including establishing a cooperative apartment on East Third Street and fighting to save one of the Lower East Side’s most well-known community gardens, “Garden of Eden.” In the 1980s, she kept a storefront photographic studio in the East Village where she photographed as many people who passed by her door as possible. In 1996, Baykal was diagnosed with end-stage cervical cancer and given nine months to live. Friends like Penny Arcade and Agosto Machado took care of Baykal in her final days and made a commitment to furthering her legacy.

Baykal had solo exhibitions at Elaine Benson Gallery, Bridgehampton, NY (1968) and La MaMa La Galleria, NYC (1991 and 1993). Select group exhibitions included Contemporary Arts Annual, curated by Thomas Lanigan Schmidt at The National Arts Club, NYC (1996); Candy Darling, Always a Lady, Feature, NYC (1997); The Nocturnal Dream Show curated by Daniel Reich at Pat Hearn Gallery, NYC (2000); Fever, curated by Allen Frame at MATTE Editions (2021); and Luxe, Calme, Volupté curated by Antonio Sergio Bessa and Allen Frame at Candice Madey Gallery, NYC (2023). Baykal’s photographs were published in Newspaper (1968-1971) and SoHo Weekly News (1980).

About Soft Network

Soft Network empowers contemporary artists and those working with artist estates and archives to imagine and implement new and sustainable legacy models. Our mission is to provide space for shared dialogue around this critical yet overlooked field and to redress exclusions in art history.