Join art historian Dr Ceren Özpınar for this book launch and in conversation event with Dr Catherine Grant and Bige Örer, celebrating the release of (Oxford University Press and British Academy, 2024).
The book examines the lives and communities of artists and their works from Turkey. It brings together several artists, including Tomur Atagök, İnci Eviner, Jûjîn, Gülsün Karamustafa, and Nil Yalter, in a world of multifaceted relationships that influence the creation of new art. Uncovering familial, professional, and friendship links, it recreates transnational networks, intellectual collectives, political alliances, and ethnic communities. It demonstrates how artists have analysed their own experiences in their works, reflecting the effects of their communities and lives, and detailing rarely seen paintings, installations, photographs, drawings, batik, and performance art from 1973 to 1998.
Dr Özpınar will introduce the book in a short presentation, before being joined for a conversation with Dr. Catherine Grant (The Courtauld) and Bige Örer (independent curator and writer).
Organised by Dr. Catherine Grant, Reader in Modern and Contemporary Art and Vice-Dean for Education, The Courtauld.Â
is a Senior Lecturer in Art History and Visual Culture at the University of Brighton. Her research centres on questions of gender, sexuality, race, and transnational networks and communities in modern and contemporary art of Turkey, the Middle East, and their diasporas. She is the co-editor of Under the Skin: Feminist Art and Art Histories from the Middle East and North Africa Today (OUP, 2020), and the author of The Art Historiography in Turkey (1970-2010) (Tarih Vakfı, 2016). Her articles appeared in the Art Journal, Art & the Public Sphere, Image & Text, and Third Text.
Bige Örer is an independent curator and writer based in London and Istanbul. She is the Director of Campaigns and Global Programs at the Four-Legged City: Urban, Nature, Animal Studies Association. From 2008 to 2024, Örer was the Director of the Istanbul Biennial. In 2022, she curated Once upon a time…, the Füsun Onur exhibition at the Pavilion of Turkey for the 59th Venice Biennale. Her curatorial projects reflect an ongoing passion for walking. Örer has initiated and coordinated numerous research and residency programs, contributed to major publications, and collaborated with leading international art institutions.
