Ataman’s ‘mid-career retrospective’ opens at İstanbul Modern

A major selection from Turkish artist Kutluğ Ataman’s works is going on public display today at the İstanbul Modern in what is billed as the first-ever retrospective in Turkey of the internationally acclaimed contemporary artist.

“The Enemy Inside Me,” curated by İstanbul Modern’s chief curator, Levent Çalıkoğlu, is billed by the museum as a “mid-career retrospective” and it brings together Ataman’s milestone video installations.

Running through March 6, 2011, at the İstanbul Modern’s temporary exhibit hall, “The Enemy Inside Me” presents 11 major works by the artist, starting from “Women Who Wear Wigs,” a four-screen video installation from 1999, made up of interviews with four Turkish women who discuss the reasons they have had to wear wigs. Another video on display is “Beggars,” a 2010 work by Ataman, which was never before exhibited in Europe and which is co-commissioned by the London-based Thomas Dane Gallery and the São Paulo Art Biennial 2010.

Ataman’s videos document the lives of marginalized individuals who explicitly give voice to their own obsessions, their relations with micro and macro power structures and verbalize straightforwardly their subliminal issues. “I am not interested in exposing these people and turning them into a show,” Ataman is quoted as saying about his preference of these characters in a press release about the exhibition on the museum’s website. “I only work with people that I see myself in.”

Ataman, who particularly owes his reputation in art circles to the social and political consciousness in his works, first made his mark in contemporary art with his works displayed at the 1997 İstanbul Biennial.

The 49-year-old Ataman, who pursued a successful international career exhibiting in distinguished museums and prestigious biennials around the world, has exhibited very few of his works in Turkey to date and this exhibition is “designed as a mid-career retrospective to celebrate the homecoming of the İstanbul-born artist after an international career spanning 13 years,” the museum said.