Kutluğ Ataman will have two solo exhibitions at Niru Ratnam Gallery from 12 April to 15 May 2022. At Gallery 1, Ataman presents 'Mesopotamian Dramaturgies', part of an ongoing series that reflects on the history and present of the region centred on Eastern Turkey where Ataman is now based, as well as the cultural and geopolitical forces at play there. The central work is a twenty-screen television installation called 'The Stream' (2022) which is the first major new work shown by Ataman since 'The Portrait of Sakip Sabanci' (exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2015 and The Royal Academy, London...
Kutluğ Ataman will have two solo exhibitions at Niru Ratnam Gallery from 12 April to 15 May 2022. At Gallery 1, Ataman presents 'Mesopotamian Dramaturgies', part of an ongoing series that reflects on the history and present of the region centred on Eastern Turkey where Ataman is now based, as well as the cultural and geopolitical forces at play there. The central work is a twenty-screen television installation called 'The Stream' (2022) which is the first major new work shown by Ataman since 'The Portrait of Sakip Sabanci' (exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2015 and The Royal Academy, London in 2016).
The exhibition will feature 'The Stream' (2022) which is the first new work shown by Ataman since 'The Portrait of Sakip Sabanci' (exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2015 and The Royal Academy, London in 2016). 'The Stream' consists of a collection of twenty televisions that are suspended in a rough pyramid shape onto a wooden structure. Eight different films variously play on the television screens. On them we see and hear a hand-held hoe digging an irrigation stream. Each of the films is a close-up. The viewer can occasionally see the hand of the digger on the hoe and hear the sound of their breathing but the main sound is the hoe scraping against the hard ground. The televisions are positioned so that the stream that is being dug runs upwards from the ground to the ceiling of the gallery. Ataman says of the work: " To me it is about reconstructing, rethinking and starting from scratch. I feel it is also about soil and water meeting and creating life, and the struggle that involves such a task. When I was making it though, I was only digging the soil and let the dry soil meet with water so I could turn the barren land into a green garden for myself. It was an attempt to heal myself."
At a second space located at 6 Denman Place, Soho, W1D 7AH, Ataman will also show photographic work from his new series 'Other Planets' (2022) which looks at the societal oppression of subject positions deemed other by authorities. The series, which also includes a major new film, builds on themes seen in earlier works such as 'Women Who Wear Wigs' (1999). In addition, Ataman is working on his new feature film 'Hilal, Feza and Other Planets' which will debut later in 2022. Ataman says of this new series: "The subjects of these series are trans individuals who volunteered to come and act the oppression they endured during the ’90s. Trans subjects are one of the leading political forces for human rights and embody the basic right to exist. It came to my mind during the filming that the sequence had a documentary quality since none of them were actors. What started as a sequence for a fictional work became real in my mind, and I was naturally drawn to this situation where artifice was crisscrossing with reality."
