The guest lecture will focus on the formation of the contemporary art field in Istanbul and how a particular category of ‘political art’ emerged from that field.
First, Ni l Uzun will present the historical background of the formation of the contemporary art field while relating it to the modernization project of the Turkish nation state as the actors within the field position themselves against it. As for the narratives of the production, reproduction and circulation of ‘political art’, the lecturer will locate them within the Western political imagination of Turkey and ‘the Middle East’.
Nil Uzun received her B.A. degree in Economics from Bogazici University Istanbul and holds M.A. degrees in Cultural Studies from Sabanci University, Istanbul and in Sociology and Social Anthropology from Central European University Budapest.
Her research interests include but are not limited to historical sociology, political sociology, social aspects of epistemology, and particularly global divisions of knowledge production. She took part in various research projects briefly on Europeanization of the civil society in Turkey; rural development in the south west of Turkey; biomass production and the role of civil society in the Balkans and the role of transnational human rights NGOs.