Soil to Surface highlights the creations of small-scale women farmers, women’s cooperatives, and internationally recognized designers from Türkiye, alongside the work of School of Art and Design students, faculty, and alumni at FIT. Proposing an alternative framework where farmers, craftspeople, and designers operate on equal ground, the exhibition sees the FIT community actively reimagining these materials for contemporary design through technical experimentation and innovative thinking.

Agricultural waste and local textile materials are repositioned in a contemporary context, allowing multiple narratives to emerge across time and geographies, while creating new paths for creative businesses to be local, sustainable, and value-driven.

Soil to Surface is realized through a collaboration between MILKist Social Design Center and FIT, and presented as part of the “Second Harvest” project, developed in partnership with Anadolu Efes and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Türkiye.