İz Öztat

Irish Museum of Modern Art | Dublin, Ireland

SAHA supports İz Öztat’s new project at Irish Museum of Modern Art between 28 November 2023- 21 April 2024.

Self-Determination: A Global Perspective is the culmination of a three-year research project, this exhibition focuses on the new nation-states that emerged in the wake of the First World War, exploring the role of art and artists in relation to the expression of national identities, nation-building, and statecraft. This exhibition explores some of the common cultural strategies that emerged across many of the new nation-states including Finland (1917), Estonia (1918), Poland (1918), Ukraine (1917), Turkey (1923), and Egypt (1922), against the backdrop of the international movement towards self-determination. Öztat focuses on processes of myth-making that is the foundation of any national identity. While the exhibition focuses on the moments in which nation states are born, her work turns its gaze towards death; exploring how the dead are instrumentalized in the invention of myths that create consensus and conflict about national identity and belonging. Funerary rituals, mausoleums, and commemoration of the dead in various cultures and historical contexts will be studied, discussed and appropriated to create fictional rituals for the dead who cannot be mourned.

Featured Modern Artists; Alvar and Eino Aalto, Ilmari Aalto, Arnold Akberg, Seref Akdik, James Archer, Ljubo Babić, Vladimir Becić, Aleksandra Beļcova, Berezil Group, Nurullah Berk, Zoia Bielkina, Jovan Bijelić, Onufriy Biziukov, Blok Group, İbrahim Çallı, Vasyl Chalienko, Abram Cherkasky, Margaret Clarke, Marcus Collin, William Conor, Lozje Dolinar, Ģederts Eliass, Refik Epikman, Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu, Annti Favén, Eileen Gray, Kyrylo Gvozdyk, Pekka Halonen, Henri Hayden, Grace Henry, Paul Henry, Evie Hone, Jerzy Hulewicz, Antonina Ivanova, Božidar Jakac, Władysław Jarocki, Mainie Jellett, Oskar Kallis, Eino Kauria, Jēkabs Kazaks, Sean Keating, Harry Kernoff, France Kralj, Tone Kralj, Olena Kryvynska, Charles Lamb, Ludolf Liberts, Herberts Līkums, Maria Ewa Łunkiewicz-Rogoyska, Karin Luts, Jūlijs Madernieks, Konrad Mägi, Rafał Malczewski, Louis Marcoussis, Đoko Mazalić, Lydia Mei, Vadym Meller, Kosta Miličević, Jănis Muncis, Eemu Myntti, Tymon Niesiołowski, Henrik Olvi, William Orpen, Johannes Pääsuke, Oksana Pavlenko, Veno Pilon, Felix Randel, Kristjan Raud, Tyko Sallinen, Helene Schjerfbeck, Emanuil Shechtman, Maya Simashkevich, Władysław Skoczylas, Melek Celal Sofu, Edith Somerville, Vojko Stanojević, Franjo Stiplovšek, Strādnieku Teātri Workers Theater, Niklāvs Strunke, Sava Šumanović, Romans Suta, Leo Svemps, Mary Swanzy,Milivoj Uzelac, Kuno Veeber, Nande Vidmar, Dmytro Vlasiuk and Jack B. Yeats.

Featured Contemporary Artists; Ursula Burke, Frances Hegarty, John Hinde, Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, Gülsün Karamustafa, Niamh McCann, Brian O’Doherty, Alan Phelan, Ursula Schulz-Dornburg, Dilek Winchester Array Collective, Banu Çennetoğlu, Jasmina Cibic, Declan Clarke, Minna Henriksson, Iz Oztat, Larissa Sansour and Søren Lind.

İz Öztat (1981, Istanbul)

studied at Oberlin College, Visual Arts in her bachelor degree, and earned her master’s degree in Visual Arts and Communication Design at Sabancı University. Her practice engages with diverse forms and media defined by her research. Her individual and collective artistic practice focuses on the return of the suppressed past in the present, questioning official narratives through the possibilities of fiction, struggles for water to flow free, the influence of education in constructing the artist and consensual negotiation of power relations. She has been engaged in an untimely collaboration with Zişan (1894 – 1970) who appears to her as an alter ego, a ghost and a historical figure. Her academic articles, essays and fictional texts have been published in various media. Öztat also participated in artist residency programmes in Amman, Berlin, London, Madrid, Mexico City, Oslo, Paris and Yerevan.

About Irish Museum of Modern Art

The Irish Museum of Modern Art is housed in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, the finest 17th-century building in Ireland, and commonly known as the ‘RHK’.From 1984-1990 a number of major cultural events and exhibitions took place on site, and in May 1991 the Royal Hospital Kilmainham was opened as the Irish Museum of Modern Art; Ireland’s first Contemporary Art Museum. IMMA connects audiences and art, providing an extraordinary space where contemporary life and contemporary art connect, challange and inspire one another.