Mayıs Rukel
1992, Ordu, Türkiye
Currently based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands

Mayis Rukel is a Turkish artist, writer, and filmmaker based in Rotterdam. His work explores magical research, liberatory remembering, radical pedagogies, child-woven futures, and befriending ghosts. He received the GRA Award for Autonomous Arts 2020 and Mondriaan Fonds Kunstenaar Start (2023). His short fiction The Pendant was featured at the Nederlands Film Festival (2020), and his feature-length fiction-documentary Movement Song was part of Mondriaan Fonds Prospects 2025.

In 2022, he participated in the Atelier AM residency, and the resulting multimedia performance ‘To get from one place to another’ was shown at Corrosia Theater in Almere. He holds a BFA from Gerrit Rietveld Academie and an MFA from the Sandberg Institute’s Ecologies of Transformation, where he explored the role of art and artists in social change.

Rukel is the co-facilitator of Radical Roots, a community-building art project based on stories of food and migration in the refugee centers across the Netherlands. His collaborations include KABK, TENT Rotterdam, and IMPAKT, and his work has been reviewed in De Volkskrant, Het Parool, Metropolis M, (A)WAKE and Filmkrant. His debut novel is set for release in fall 2025.


MFA, Ecologies of Transformation, Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam, 2023
BFA, VAV - moving image, Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, 2020
BA, English Literature, Istanbul University, Istanbul, 2015