Image: Köken Ergun. Heros, 2019. Video still. Courtesy of the artist
Who's in Town?
Köken Ergun
Please join us in the Reading Room for an artist talk by Köken Ergun.
Köken Ergun (born in 1976, Istanbul) is an artist whose output includes film, video installations, and most recently, collaboratively produced animation. His academic training as an anthropologist and background in theater inform his interest in the performance of identity through ritual, which he has traced across diverse communities of limited visibility, including the beauty contests of Pilipino guest workers (Binibining Promised Land, 2010), weddings of Gastarbeiter Turks and Kurds in Germany (Wedding, 2009), or the Ashura celebrations of Caferi Shiites in Istanbul (Ashura, 2011).
Köken Ergun is passing through Abu Dhabi on his way to Lahore, where his most recent work China Beijing I Love You (2023) is being shown as part of the Lahore Biennale. For his talk at the Reading Room of the NYUAD Art Gallery, Ergun will delve into his path to becoming an artist, in addition to talking about the above mentioned projects.
The talk will be held in English and is open to everyone.
About the speaker
Having studied acting at Istanbul University, Ergun completed his postgraduate degree in Ancient Greek Literature at King’s College London, followed by an MA degree on Art History at the Bilgi University. After working with American theatre director Robert Wilson, Ergun became involved with video and film. His multi-channel video installations have been exhibited internationally at institutions including Documenta 14, Palais de Tokyo, SALT, Garage MCA, Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, Protocinema, KIASMA, Digital Art Lab Tel Aviv, Casino Luxembourg, Para-Site and Kunsthalle Winterthur. His films received several awards at film festivals, including the “Tiger Award for Short Film” at the 2007 Rotterdam Film Festival and the “Special Mention Prize” at the 2013 Berlinale.
He has also co-founded two initiatives still active in Istanbul that provide discursive spaces by bring together thinkers, scholars and practitioners around the ideas of archive and video work respectively, titled After the Archive? and Kırık.
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