Özlem Sulak - Fictive Presence

From September 19th to November 18th, the Bank Austria Kunstforum in Vienna dedicates an exhibition in its vault room to the artist Özlem Sulak, born in Turkey in 1979. In her work, Özlem Sulak puts into context some aspects of cultural agency and forms of memory, by initiating dialogues beyond temporal and linguistic limitations. An exhibition portrait by CastYourArt.

Being a child of ones time means that our existence is influenced by what our environment – our social situation, our political culture with its possibilities and limitations, our history - has in store for us. Besides her ways to see and produce art, Özlem Sulak also owes her name to this fact. Her parents named the child born after the military’s coup Özgür Özlem which means “desire for freedom”. Her work has a political and biographical character, originating in the experience of attributions, distinction, delimitation and discrimination. These are cultural operational indexes that make personal matters political ones and lets politics intrude into personal life. In the vault room of the Bank Austria Kunstforum, the artist is represented with five pieces (videos and installations) in which she takes a very poetic approach to existential questions. In the title of the exhibition, “Fictive Presence”, she refers to a state of not-yet-being-there. Any immigrant in Germany with a status pending deportation or residence permit, receives a so-called certification of fiction as a preliminary documentation of his almost being there - Fictive Presence. (Written by Wolfgang Haas. Translated by Cem Angeli.)

https://www.kunstforumwien.at/

Interviewee: Özlem Sulak
Artworks by: Özlem Sulak

Copyright info: The audio and video recording has been made with personal permission of the artist.
Licensing: 0
Language(s): German, English
Subtitles: German, English
Producer: KA21 GmbH / CastYourArt
Production crew: Wolfgang Haas, Roman Pachernegg
Production country: Austria, Vienna