PhD | Archival Impulse in Contemporary Art Scene of Turkey

PhD-candidate | Özümcan Çekiç
Institution: Leiden University, LUCAS
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Sybille Lammes, Dr. Pepita Hesselberth

My PhD research examines the increasing interest in archives over the past two decades in Turkey’s contemporary art scene. It focuses on the artistic and curatorial practices that challenge official history and politics of memory by problematizing conventional archival endeavor. Through a close reading of various projects, it discusses the limits and the possibilities of creative archival interventions, questioning what and how we can learn from them. In this regard, this study adopts an interdisciplinary approach aiming to develop a conceptual framework to understand cultural, socio-political implication of the tendency towards archives and memory from a local and global perspective.

Illustration: Ayşe Tuğ, untitled, 2021