Şener Özmen, Erkan Özgen, 1971 / 1971

Şener Özmen graduated from the Department of Art Education at Çukurova University in 1988, and now lives and works in Berlin. Erkan Özgen was born in Mardin; he is a graduate of the Department of Painting at Çukurova University and lives and works in Diyarbakır.

The two artists normally work separately, making this a rare collaboration. Özgen’s preferred mediums of expression are video and photography. Having been born and raised in southeastern Turkey, which borders Syria and Iraq, he centers his work on themes such as language, identity, war, and ethnic and ideological difference. Özmen, who is closely involved with literature and especially poetry, uses a provocative style to question authority and the conditions, definitions, and conventions imposed by those in power. His aim is to get the viewer thinking by drawing their attention to social issues, transformations, and reactions through the use of a poeticized humor.

The video “Road to Tate Modern” tells the story of the artists’ efforts to reach that art museum in London. Laden with ironic references to Miguel de Cervantes’s classic novel “Don Quixote” (1605/15), it shows one of the characters riding a horse and the other a donkey as they set out from the mountains of Diyarbakır in pursuit of their “impossible dream”. The work uses dramatic language to examine the tragicomic efforts of artists who work on the periphery and aspire to overcome the insurmountable obstacles that prevent them from reaching the art world’s “holy of holies”. Conveying the dilemma and sterility of the relationship between the current art scene at the center and the artist at the periphery, the video also touches upon the difficulties involved in establishing oneself in the world of contemporary art.