RE-DIRECTING: EAST Conversations # 5:
Nazlı Gürlek and İz Öztat (Turkey)
A talk about contemporary art scene in Turkey through the persona and work of Ziºan (born in 1894), a marginal feminist author, who influenced Öztat’s.
July 3,2013 at 6 p.m., Laboratory building CCA
The presentations are held in English.
RE-DIRECTING: EAST Conversation # 5: Nazlı Gürlek and İz Öztat from CSW TV.
This conversation between curator Nazlı Gürlek and artist İz Öztat will attempt to question their own contested relationship with the past in Turkey and ways in which it informs the present cultural practices. They will focus on certain strategies in the artistic practice such as reproduction and appropriation which have largely shaped the cultural production in the country, through İz's relationships with works and ideas of a marginal intellectual named Ziºan (b. Istanbul, 1894), whom she recently discovered and began to collaborate with.
The issues of reproduction and appropriation are as old as modern Turkish art. Copies of Western styles and forms have shaped the visual self-representation in the late Ottoman Empire and in the first half of the Turkish Republic. The issue is not alien to the present day cultural phenomena either. The ongoing protests against the authoritarian policies of AKP (Justice and Development Party) for instance were started by a small group of liberal youth claiming their right to the city on May 28 at Taksim Gezi Park against the park's demolition and replacement with a replica of Ottoman-era military barracks. The reconstruction concerns only the facade of the original building, which is to cover a "city museum", shops and restaurants. The planned replica, a major manifestation of AKP's attempts of self-historicization is met with the youth's epic resistance.
The event urges us to embody a series of questions such as: Is inheritance load or source? What can be the legacy of Ziºan's queer and anarchist point of view for us today? Can an archive, found or made, invite alternative futures?
Ziºan, as a feminist Turkish-Armenian intellectual of ambiguous belonging who produced many photographs, photomontages, collages and written works, but nevertheless remained invisible and thus didn’t make it into the pages of history has recently become for İz Öztat, nothing but a channeled spirit and alter ego. The conversation will offer a critical reading of the Turkish modern art history and its legacy in the present through an analysis of İz Öztat's unconventional mode of collaboration with Ziºan. It will provide an alternative path into our relationship with the past, archives and the heritage focusing upon a series of interrelated issues and concepts which include feminism and anti-conscription, collectivity and collaboration, the current Ottoman nostalgia and its urban reconstructions, Gezi Park protests, parallel histories and uncovered biographies.
Nazlı Gürlek (b. 1981, Istanbul, Turkey) is an independent curator and writer based in Istanbul where she is the Vice President of AICA Turkey. She has obtained her MFA in Curating at Goldsmiths College in London (2008), and her BA in Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence (2006). She had been Assistant Curator of the Turkey Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009), and curated a number of solo and group exhibitions since then, including "BENGÜ BURAK VOLKAN ALP ELMAS İZ" (Maçka Sanat Galerisi, Istanbul, Sept 2011-June 2012), Shared (5533, Istanbul, 2012), The Riot Act (Galerie Mor Charpentier, Paris, 2011), İnci Eviner (Nesrin Esirtgen Collection, Istanbul, 2011), "Rehearsal" (Gallery Non, Istanbul, 2011), "The Fold" (Elgiz Museum of Contemporary Art, Istanbul, 2011). Recently, she also curated "DIYALOG": Art From Turkey at ViennaFair The New Contemporary (September 2012); and co-organised a series of talks entitled CONTEMPORARY ART IN TURKEY FROM 1980’s TO THE PRESENT: TESTIMONIES AND SHARED EXPERIENCES at Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts, Istanbul, alongside other board members at AICA Turkey (December 2012-January 2013). Her writings have been published in Flash Art International, Sanat Dünyamız, and Frieze Blog among others. Also since 2008 she has been working as a founding editor at an independent publishing house IMpress alongside Ilaria Gianni and Rosa Lleo. To date IMpress has published Artists' Shelves # 1, and A Fine Red Line: A Curatorial Miscellany, guest-edited the 129th issue of Circa Art Magazine, and organised "A Fine Red Line – Live" (176 Project Space, London, 2008).
İz Öztat (born in 1981) lives and works in Istanbul. She completed her BA degree in visual arts with honors at Oberlin College, Ohio and her MA degree in visual arts and communication at Sabancı University, İstanbul. She is currently a candidate for PhD in Art Practice at Yıldız Technical University, İstanbul. She lectured at Kadir Has University between 2009 – 2011. In 2008, she co-founded Cura Bodrum residency in Muğla as an investigation into self-organization and non-institutional support mechanisms. Since 2011, she is the director of Cda-Projects Grant for Artistic Research and Production. Her selected exhibitions include "Here Together Now" (Matadero, Madrid, 2013), "I am not dealing with triangle, square and circle" (Maçka Art Gallery, Istanbul, 2012), "Underconstruction" (Apartment Project , Berlin, 2012), "Second Exhibition", (ARTER, Istanbul, 2010), "When Ideas Become Crime" (DEPO, Istanbul, 2010), "Public Idea" (5533, Istanbul, 2010).
