Kutlug Ataman
This 40 monitor installation is an island of 40 narratives. The viewer walks through these, and haphazardly chooses which subject’s story to listen to. This allows each viewer to come away with their unique experience, and understanding of what the story of Küba is.
The residents have very modest backgrounds, living as social outcasts on the outskirts of the city. Yet their strong characters are a testimony to the fact that they are at the very center of their own realms. As the residents tell their very individual stories, they exercise yet another quite unexpected construction. Almost like a beehive at work, telling their own personal narratives, they construct a shared singular identity, namely being a Küban. The meaning of being an individual; of belonging to a community; the rules of belonging and of being an outsider; the nature of identity as a cultural construction; the nature of the being at the receiving end of that narrative construct as the viewer; - these become some of the main questions of Küba.
Exhibitions
Artangel, The Sorting Office, London, 2005
54th Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, 2005
Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2005
Theater Der Welt, Stuttgart, 2005
Museum of Contemporary Art Conde Duque, Madrid, 2005
Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York, 2006
Freedom Square, Bratislava, Slovakia, 2006
Ethnographic Museum, Budapest, 2006
Vukavur City Museum, Eltz Castle, Crotia, 2006
Cenetti House, Roussa, Bulgaria, 2006
Tomis Tourist Harbour, Constanta, Bucharest, 2006
Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, 2006
Extra City Center for Contemporary Art, 2006
Sherman Galleries, Sydney, 2006
BAK, Utrecht, 2007
Emergencies, Pirelli Hangar, Milan, 2007
Basis Voor Actuele Kunst, Utrecht, Netherlands, 2007
Pirelli Hangar Bicocca, Milan, 2007
TANAS, Berlin, 2008
Vancouver Art Gallery, 2008
Museum Ludwig, Köln, 2009
Guggenheim Bilbao, 2011
2nd Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, Yekaterinburg, Russia, 2012
Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, Tasmania, 2013
NEON, Athens, Greece, 2021
Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid, Spain, 2021