Kutluğ Ataman - The Enemy Inside Me

İstanbul Modern presented the first ever retrospective in Turkey of the internationally acclaimed artist Kutluğ Ataman. "The Enemy Inside Me" exhibition brought together Ataman’s milestone videos and installations.

Kutluğ Ataman’s video and film works document the lives of marginalized individuals who explicitly give voice to their own obsessions, their relations with micro and macro power structures and verbalize straightforwardly their subliminal issues or sexuality. Ataman chooses narratives that dangle between reality and fiction in his work, which chiefly retains the documentary style. He questions how individuals manifest their identities through storytelling and how narratives are used to re-fabricate another ‘self’. While offering an alternative to the categorizing structure of identity politics by putting the individual at the core, Ataman also interconnects historiography, social/individual identity, memory, plurality, myth, game and power.Individuals at the centre of Ataman’s works narrate over flexible performances such as personal myth-making, masking and shielding. Ataman also shapes the screen layout of his video works into installation/sculpture like forms.

Ataman first made his mark in contemporary art with his contribution to the 1997 International İstanbul Biennial. Subsequently, he pursued a successful international career through his exhibitions and the prestigious awards he has obtained."The Enemy Inside Me" at İstanbul Modern was designed as a mid-career retrospective to celebrate the homecoming of the İstanbul-born artist after an international career spanning thirteen years.

The Enemy Inside Me presents 11 major works including Women Who Wear Wigs (1999), Never My Soul (2001), It’s a Vicious Circle (2002), 99 Names (2002), The 4 Seasons of Veronica Read (2002), Stefan’s Room (2004), Testimony (2006), Paradise (2006), Turkish Delight (2007), fff (2006-9), along with a new work never before seen in Europe, Beggars (2010), co-commissioned by Thomas Dane Gallery and the 29th Bienal de São Paulo, 2010.

Curator: Levent Çalıkoğlu