Kutlug Ataman,Where Identity Confronts Form
Drew Frist
In a style that’s signature to Turkish artist Kutlug Ataman, the traveling video installation "Küba" documents 40 stories and portraits from Küba, a run-down area just southwest of central Istanbul. More than a Turkish favela or shantytown, Küba represents and embodies one of Europe’s more pressing contemporary issues.
Can a continent with intentions to create a united Europe really elevate itself beyond borders and ethnicity to create a community of citizens and not nations?
In an essay on Ataman’s exhibition and history, Curator of Media Arts at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, Bill Horrigan suggests, in short, "yes." In his essay entitled "Küba, Si!," Horrigan documents Küba’s mythical origins and its residents. Part of what makes the area remarkable, he writes, is that they are unified by a more "generationally-transmitted instinct to defy the forces of law and power rather than through any more observable markers of identity."
Kübans have chosen to construct identity simply. First and foremost, Kübans are Kübans.
Taken out of the sterile and often stuffy confines of a museum, Ataman introduces a fresh context in which to view his videologues. Set to journey from Istanbul to Vienna via barge, "Küba" will tour Rousse, Bulgaria; Belgrade and Novi Sad, Serbia; Budapest, Hungary; and Bratislava, Slovakia before showing in Vienna.
The deeply symbolic trip starts from the mouth of the Black Sea and will travel through the Danube River onto Austria. The nomadic nature of this exhibit and Ataman’s denial of traditional exhibition spaces expands the context of "Küba" from solely a video installation to a pan-European commentary.
At first seeing the televisions and chairs, viewers might be overwhelmed by 40 subtitled faces glowing from the monitors. But in actuality, Ataman’s video portraits are an accessible balance of individual and community. Interviewees and Ataman discuss Küba in simple terms, speaking about the individual Küban’s life story and personal drama.
Wherever the installation may go, Ataman’s Kübans will be a foreign people in a foreign land. But, in effect, that is what Ataman wanted. "Küba" is about presenting a people that are foreign not because of actual difference but because of a larger, European resistance.
Perhaps no better a candidate to speak about European integration and inclusion than a Turkish artist, "Küba" is not Ataman’s first exhibited video confessional or portrait. He began his collaboration with museums, galleries and art institutions after the release and viewing of his first video installation, semiha b. unplugged. The piece projected a 465-minute-long video portrait of Semiha Berksoy, a Turkish opera doyenne.
Horrigan made proper note of the power in Ataman’s earlier and current projects. As he stated in his essay, and I agree in full, Ataman’s portrait installations "sustain the inherent dignity of those depicted…"
In a world just beginning to cope with post-ethnic growing pains, Ataman, his Kübans and their travels that add an insightful and video-recorded confessional of the trials and tribulations of a European identity.
