Köken Ergun

Henie Onstad Kunstsenter | Høvikodden, Norway

SAHA supports Köken Ergun's project in the photography and new media triennial titled New Visions, organized at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, held 14 April – 17 September 2023. Curated by Susanne Ostby Saether, Inga Lace and Reem Shadid, the second edition of the triennial, focuses on artists and works related to Eastern Europe and the Middle East, which are characterized by colonial, extractivist economies or are victims of colonialism.

For New Visions 2023, Köken Ergun and Sasha Azanova present a newly commissioned collaborative work centered on the Polar Silk Road, its relation to Norway, and the melting of Arctic ice. The Polar Silk Road is a new maritime route conceived by China with Russian collaboration that passes through the Russian waters of the slowly melting Arctic and terminates at newly built ports on Norway’s Arctic shores. This work continues Ergun’s ongoing research into China’s global expansion and features two maps and a video made in collaboration with ethnographers, historians, sociologists, artists, and infrastructural specialists. Ergun and Azanova lay out the Polar Silk Road on Chinese cartographer Hao Xiaoguang’s vertical world maps that center the northern and southern hemispheres. Poetry, songs, and stock imagery in the video further contextualize Xiaoguang’s novel cartography. The deliberate upending of perceptual norms underscores the geopolitical struggle over energy resources in the Arctic. Further, the work questions the roles of infrastructure and representation as agents of soft power, expansionism, and extractivism.

Köken Ergun (1976, Istanbul) is an artist working in film and installation. His films often deal with communities that are not known to a greater public and the importance of ritual in such groups. Ergun usually spends long time with his subjects before he starts filming and engages in a long research period for his projects. He also collaborates with ethnographers, historians and sociologists for publications and lecture series as extensions to his artistic practice ERGUN studied acting at Istanbul University, completed his postgraduate degree in ancient Greek literature at King’s College London, and earned an MA in art history at the Bilgi University, Istanbul. After working with American theater director Robert Wilson, Ergun became involved with video and film. His video installations have been exhibited at Kathmandu Triennale 2077; Jakarta Biennial: ESOK; Documenta 14; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; SALT, Istanbul; Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam; and Casino Luxembourg. Ergun’s films have received the Tiger Award for Short Film at the 2007 Rotterdam Film Festival and the Special Mention Prize at the 2013 Berlinale.

About Henie Onstad Kunstsenter 

Henie Onstad Kunstsenter is an institution for modern and contemporary art and its audiences, located 10 km outside the capital Oslo. Founded in 1968, Henie Onstad's collection and program focuses on interdisciplinary practices and points to the role of the avant-garde in contemporary art practices, for example through Fluxus art, of which the art center has an important collection. Since 1970, Henie Onstad has exhibited photography as part of its exhibition programs and has played an important role in establishing photography as an artistic medium in Norway.