Hakan Topal

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Contemporary Art; Sociology of Art and Design; Commons, Social Engagement and Community Arts; Cultural Institutions, Art Biennials and Museums; Art and Technology; Aesthetic Justice; Geopolitics, Ecology and Borders.

Fall 2024

• Art and Technology (New Media)
• Critical Topics I (MFA Program)

For a complete publication list, please visit: purchase.academia.edu/HakanTopal

Recently:

• “Beyond the Controversies, Documenta Is a Remarkable Gathering of Voices” in Hyperallergic. June 28th, 2022. https://hyperallergic.com/744018/beyond-the-controversies-documenta-is-a-remarkable-gathering-of-voices/
• “Reasons for Optimism in Istanbul’s Art World” in Hyperallergic. October 24th, 2021. https://hyperallergic.com/683100/reasons-for-optimism-in-istanbuls-art-world/
• “What Happened to the Hagia Sophia Is a Terrible Shame” in Hyperallergic. August 9th, 2021. https://hyperallergic.com/667754/what-happened-to-the-hagia-sophia-is-a-terrible-shame/

Recent Presentations

2022

• Temporary Assembly of Living Things: A talk with Gurur Ertem & Hakan Topal. Depo Istanbul.

2021

• Power of Water: GoundWork Online Conference. GroundWork Gallery, Norfolk.
• Bodies, un-protected Conference. Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt

2020

• Conversations on the Integrities of the Body: Social Wounds. Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt.

2019

• Media Arts and Art Education in the 21st Century. Mimar Sinan University, Istanbul.
• Parsons Fine Arts Visiting Artist Lecture Series: Hakan Topal. The New School University, New York.
• Bodies of Evidence: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Politics of Movement. ”Amor Mundi” at Bimeras. Istanbul
• Visiting Artist at Datça Summer School. Datça, Turkey.

TEMPORARY ASSEMBLY OF LIVING THINGS, MAY 2022
SOLO EXHIBITION AT DEPO ISTANBUL

At Depo Istanbul, a non-for-profit alternative art space, I presented the solo exhibition, Temporary Assembly of Living Things which brought together three related projects that have never been exhibited in Turkey. These were Still Life (2012-16)* is a documentary-based conceptual video composed of silent video portraits of the Roboski Families. Through durational images, the work highlights the political agency of the victims’ relatives in the face of injustice and continuing state violence and harassment. Soil.Water.Ash., I & II (2014, 2022) is composed of two performative videos and an installation produced during the Yatağan power plant worker’s strike against the privatization of Yatağan, Yeniköy and Kemerköy coal power plants, and the ongoing Ikizkoy Resistance against the coal mine destroying the ancient forest. The project presents staged demonstrations and poetically explores some of the visible contradictions and invites the audience to think about the rights of both living and non-living things together. The Golden Cage (2022) is an installation based on the northern bald ibis (a.k.a “kelaynak” in Turkish), the most endangered migratory bird in the Middle East. When Palmyra fell to ISIS, the kelaynak colony, which migrates from Northeast Africa to Birecik (a small town near the Turkish-Syrian border), faced total extinction. In March 2016, the Birecik Kelaynak Reproduction Center decided not to release the birds from the confinement cages to protect them—the center has been keeping a semi-wild population since the late 1970s. The Golden Cage refers to a set of confinements amidst the never-ending catastrophes in the region; it is a poetic examination of artifacts, ruins, water bodies, and organisms spread across a highly nationalized terrain. As the embodied symbol of the state, the cage is enacted through a text translated into multiple languages to create new associations about borders, migrations, entrapments, and untranslatability.

The exhibition booklet can be downloaded here: https://www.depoistanbul.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/TemporaryAssemblyofLivingThings-HakanTopal-Depo-Booklet.pdf

As part of the exhibition Temporary Assembly of Living Things, which was on view at Depo until July 8, a conversation was held with the participation of academic Dr. Gurur Ertem.

This exhibition was reviewed by art critic Evrim Altug for DuvaR newspaper (Turkish) https://www.gazeteduvar.com.tr/zaman-ayarli-afetin-gecici-meclis-tutanaklari-makale-1570958

And an Artforum Magazine review, by Kaya Genc is  available in the September, 2022 issue.

THE GOLDEN CAGE, JUNE 2022
SOLO EXHIBITION AT AGA KHAN MUSEUM, TORONTO

I had a solo exhibition at Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, which is currently on view until November 12^th. For this immersive exhibition, I worked on a five-channel video installation with sound, text, and artifacts. The Golden Cage explores the impact of human intervention on the life of one of the most endangered bird species across the highly nationalized terrain of the Turkish-Syrian border. The Golden Cage is a part of the Museum’s Birds rotation — a deep dive into the Museum’s Permanent Collection focusing on the fascinating sights and stories of the avian world and the art they’ve inspired throughout history.

THE GOLDEN CAGE, JULY 2022
PERFORMANCE AND SOLO EXHIBITION AT MOUSONTURM, FRANKFURT

For this iteration of the Golden Cage project, besides the installation of a two-channel video installation, and artifacts, a script was performed in Arabic, Armenian, English, German, Kurdish, and Turkish by amateur actors composed of mostly migrants during the exhibition.

You can download the exhibition booklet here: https://www.academia.edu/84385088/The_Golden_Cage_2022