Fatma Bucak ^(TR/UK)

Fatma Bucak studied Philosophy at Istanbul University and History of Art and Etching in Italy at the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts. She holds an MA in Photography at the Royal College of Art in London.

Fatma Bucak’s works address the plurality of histories through a variety of artistic media, including photography, performance, sound, and video installation. The themes of political identity, historical memory, and gender are critical to her research. Her recent works have focused on the intersection between political power and climate change.

Bucak was 2023-24 Fellow in Visual Arts at the American Academy in Rome as the winner of the 2023 Fondazione Sviluppo e Crescita CRT Italian Fellow in Visual Arts. She was named one of the Royal Photographic Society’s ‘Hundred Heroines’, recognizing the achievements of women in contemporary art and photography. Bucak has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto, Pinchuk Art Center Kyiv, the Jewish Museum New York, Art in General New York, Palazzo Esposizioni Roma, Castello di Rivoli, Kunsthaus Dresden, Brown University David Winton Bell Gallery, Biennale de Kinshasa, Venice Biennale – Italian Pavilion | Tese di San Cristoforo, Goteborg Biennale, MAMAC Nice, MoMA New York’s Non-Fiction Films, ARTER Istanbul, Z33 Hasselt and Fondazione Merz. She earned a fellowship at the Columbia University Italian Academy for Advanced Studies and was an artist-in-resident at ISCP in Brooklyn, New York. Bucak directed the documentary film Almost Married, which premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam and co-curated a year-long performance series project, Transition, at YKY, Istanbul. She was a winner of the 9th Italian Council Award.

ABOUT FATMA BUCAK’S PhD PROJECT:
Shared Disasters and the Sound of the Setting Sun is a project on climate change and its direct and indirect relation to state violence. The work is a research-based operatic performance and its narrated from the perspective of a bird, a tree, and a flower. The work focuses especially on the extensive research on the destruction of non-human species and their habitats caused by human activity. The project studies specifically the conflicts in the Middle East and their consequences in wider geography, including Europe. As an effective tool for discussing social and political issues, operatic performance here will narrate non-human stories to reflect on the conjuncture between environmental destruction and conflict. This project will examine how opera and performance as medium can be reconnected to its time to address climate change and challenge the prevailing ideas around the discourse on environmental destruction and violence.

This profile is last updated on 3 June 2024.