“Human Nature” Azade Köker

Azade Köker, who mainly carries out her artistic works in Germany and is an instructor at the Braunschweig University of Technology, is using photography for the first time in her exhibition titled "Human Nature" held at the Milli Reasürans Art Gallery, questioning today's reality through the eyes of the recorder of reality.

Known as a versatile artist who has created original aesthetics with materials such as paper and thread in her exhibitions "Transparency" (Galeri Apel, 2001, Istanbul) and "Recollections" (Galeri Nev, 2006, Ankara) in Turkey, and has attracted attention with her works in the exhibition "Memory and Scale" (Istanbul Modern Art Museum, 2006, Istanbul), and also remembered for her sculpture "Passion" removed from Kuğulu Park in Ankara as "found indecent", Azade Köker graduated from the Ceramic Department of Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts (1972). She received an industrial design education at the Berlin University of the Arts with a scholarship (1973-76). She also pursued sculpture education at the same academy (1976-79). In the final years of her education, she established her own studio in Berlin. During this period, she moved away from ceramics and started working with clay (terra cotta). Although the materials and tools she used changed over time, the artist focused on themes and concepts such as women, anti-militarism, patriarchal discourse, temporality-permanence, fragmentation, and the disappearance of boundaries, shaping her own language.

Azade Köker has stood out with her artistic works and activities in education since she opened her first exhibition in Germany in 1980. She held exhibitions in many cities in Germany and was invited to important exhibitions and international events. Her works were placed in public spaces in Berlin where she lived. She was awarded the Darmstadt City Honorary Award (1985). She received a scholarship from the Berlin City Senate (1985). She won the Fine Arts Criticism Award from the Association of German Critics (1986) and the Düsseldorf Grand Art Award (1988). Starting her teaching career as an instructor at the Berlin University of the Arts (1994), the artist taught at universities in Germany and various other countries as a professor. Currently residing in Berlin, Azade Köker directs the Institute of Plastic Arts affiliated with the Architecture Department at the Braunschweig University of Technology.

The "Human Nature" exhibition is the artist's fifth solo exhibition in Turkey. In the exhibition catalogue, Esra Yıldız emphasizes the following: "The portraits of women and girls that constitute a significant part of the works in the exhibition are faces personally known to the artist, intersecting paths in a period of her life, familiar to some viewers. Works using images from the political arena such as Angela Merkel and Condoleezza Rice, which come into our lives as one of the thousands of images that come into our homes as the most intimate space through newspapers and television, or images that have a special meaning for the artist from some family photo albums, or works using the aesthetics of instant photography, question what is private and what is intimate with the entry of photographic imagery into every aspect of life due to the advances of the digital age. Köker's aim of transforming the existing without aiming to digital manipulation, playing with pixels in her works where she breaks and manipulates images, requires us to reexamine the values in which reality is constructed in the 21st century. The fragmented/pixelated portraits of women and children change with the effect of the material and light used, aiming to create images that will be formed anew and cannot be repeated with each repositioning of the viewer in the space. Against the framing imposed by photography, Köker continues the traces of three-dimensionality she created in her sculptures by fragmenting, with the effects of light and the material she uses, and creating relief effects with different perceptions in her photographs. We also witness the fragmentation of the subject that creates all these works. Köker's works, where she breaks down images sifted from her own memory, highlight the importance of the artist's subjective reality against the redefinition of reality in terms of time and space dimensions of the digital age, causing shifts in meaning, and sometimes the loss of traces of personalization that the creative subject adds to the artwork."

Azade Köker exhibition will be held between October 17 – November 10, 2007 at Millî Reasürans Art Gallery.