Kutlug Ataman

In his first survey exhibition in a public gallery in the UK, artist and filmmaker Kutlug Ataman presented seven film and video installations that investigate key issues of individual identity in contemporary society.

Working in a documentary style, Ataman explored the boundaries between reality and fiction as his subjects revealed their personalities through the telling of their own stories.

The exhibition included the world premiere of 1+1=1 (2002), a video installation that examines the historic conflict in Cyprus from the viewpoint of a Turkish Cypriot woman living in the Greek Cypriot part of the island. Other works in the exhibition included Women Who Wear Wigs (1999), which features four individuals, including a political activist and a cancer patient, for whom wearing a wig is, for very different reasons, essential to their identity. Ataman’s subjects also include transvestite Ceyhan Firat in Never My Soul (2001), English Hippeastrum (Amaryllis) collector and expert Veronica Read in The 4 Seasons of Veronica Read (2001) and Turkish opera diva Semiha Berksoy in kutlug ataman’s semiha b. unplugged (1997).