Burcu Yağcıoğlu, 1981

Burcu Yağcıoğlu was born in 1981 in Istanbul. She received her bachelor’s degree from the Department of Painting at the Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts in 2001 and her master’s degree from the Department of Visual Art and Visual Communication Design at Sabanci University in 2005, then continued her graduate degree education at Goldsmiths University in London until 2008. The artist now lives and works in Istanbul and London.

Yağcıoğlu’s art practice comprises a variety of different techniques of representation, including video, painting, drawing, and sculpture. The artist deliberates on the concept of mutability in terms of images, objects, experiences, ideas, and forms.

The diptych “Carbon Blues” also includes worms and designs representing decay. Beyond the visual similarities, concepts like disappearance are also shared guiding lights. The naked mole rat inside the diamond in the middle of the work is a reference to the extensive use of these mice in laboratory research. Although they are mammals, they have a social structure similar to that of bees, and are preferred by scientific researchers for three reasons: they live seven times longer than all other mice and rats, their nervous systems lack a mechanism for pain reception, and they can’t get cancer. The artist contrasts diamonds, that sought-after gemstone, with the naked mole rat’s place in the culture of biotechnology.