Bio
Zeyno Pekünlü is an artist whose artistic interventions mostly take the form of videos and installations. She is currently running the Istanbul Biennial’s Production and Research Program and the Istanbul Cell of Fellowship for Situated Practice organized by BAK Utrecht. Together with Köken Ergun, she is co-founder of KIRIK, an initiative for people and topics in the cracks. She is on the editorial board of Red Thread Journal and also a member of The Institute of Radical Imagination.
Her important shows include; 2022 The Real Show, CAC Brétigny, 2021 Once Upon a Time Inconceivable, Protocinema/ This Place, Yapı Kredi Arts and Culture/ 39th EVA International-Ireland's Biennial, 2020 Artists in Quarantine, The Museum confederation L’Internationale, 2016-2017 Institute for New Feeling, Artist Film International/White Chapel Gallery/Hammer Museum/MAAT/Istanbul Modern Museum, 2016 Zeyno Pekünlü, SALT Ulus, 2015 Istanbul: Passion, Joy, Fury, MAXXI Museum/ Salt Water, 14th Istanbul Biennial/ Neither Back Nor Forward: Acting in the Present, Jakarta Biennale/ Every Inclusion is an Exclusion of Other Possibilities, SALT Beyoglu/ Sights and Sounds: Turkey, Jewish Museum, New York.
Statement
Comprising a wide spectrum of materials my works traverse public and private manifestations of various forms of subordination, and problematize the technologies of power. The works invert the social functions of materials through deformation, contextual detachment, and categorization of ordinary texts and images. Scanning a range of issues, from the constitutive myths of maleness and femaleness as gender roles to questioning knowledge and its distribution, the approach of the works aims to decipher “power” that encompasses the intimate and the social simultaneously. Rather than creating an instance of enlightenment, the ongoing dialogue between these works exposes the spectator to a state of temporary perplexity, disorientation, and non-identification.