Gizem Karakaş

Gizem Karakaş (b. 1987, Istanbul) graduated with her BFA from École des Arts de la Sorbonne in the Plastic Arts department in 2009 and received her MFA degree at the same university in the Arts and New Media department in 2011.

In her practice, she focuses on the struggles, ironies, comedy, and poetry of everyday life with semi-fictional narratives of an individual becoming, navigating interpersonal and context-based relationships. Her photo, video, sound, performance, and text-based works explore the concept of sincerity in relationships through the ambiguous areas left between the intimate and the public, reality and fiction, art, and life.

Ongoing collective processes are central to Karakaş’ practice. She is a member of the collectives HAH (2017-2020) and Medyartiz since 2011. She has been one of the faces of Hayırlı Evlat since 2017. She participated in the Arter Research Program from 2020 to 2021 and was the facilitator of Garp Sessions 2022 along with David Horvitz.

BETWEEN US
Between Us focuses on Nil Yalter's process of moving out of apartment after the loss of Joël Boutteville, her life partner and companion of nearly half a century, Yalter's participation in this year's Venice Biennale, her being awarded the Golden Lion Lifetime Honor Award, and the launch of the book Şu Gurbetlik Zor Zanaat Zor, which she launched in parallel with the biennale. Gizem Karakaş documents all these processes through video, polaroid photographs and texts, which are the mediums that the artist frequently uses in her practice. Between Us looks at the relationships between subjects in this process through the themes of migration, friendship, loss and transmission.