Istanbul-based Gözde İlkin’s work is made out of repurposed domestic fabrics that she has been collecting over time. Table cloths, curtains and bed duvets act as memory objects that stage İlkin’s motifs and images. She deftly reworks the material with an arrangement of loose threads and thin layers of paint.
Her artworks which incorporate stitching, drawing, painting as well as video and sound installations, construct forms of confrontational interactions that tend to manipulate borders, gender dynamics and ferocious urban transformations. Her stories never quite unfold into their logical conclusion. They enact political relationships, feelings and promises that are failing to reach a solution, remaining abstract and in limbo.
GÖZDE ILKIN (b. 1981, Kütahya) has lived in various regions of Turkey and studied painting in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Mimar Sinan University. From 2005 to 2006, she attended European Union Education and Youth Programs: Leonardo da Vinci Program at the RAM and Ram Foundation in Rotterdam. She completed her master’s degree at Marmara University in 2008.
She has exhibited at numerous spaces and institutions in Turkey, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States. Her work has been shown at Bündner Kunstmuseum in Chur, Swizerland (Upcoming, August 2022); as part of “Rooted Beings,” curated by Barbara Rodriguez Munoz, Wellcome Collection, London (2022), “12th Survival Kit Festival,” Curated by Övül Durmuşoğlu, Joanna Warsza, Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, Riga (2021); “UnNatural History,” Curated by Invisible Dust, Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry (2021); Minds Rising Spirits Tuning 13th Gwangju Biennial, under the artistic direction of Defne Ayas and Natasha Ginwala, South Korea (2021); “The Event of a Thread: Global Narratives in Textiles,” Curated by Susanne Weiß, Inka Gressel Öykü Özsoy, Istanbul Modern Museum (2019); “The 15th Istanbul Biennale: A Good Neighbor,” curated by Elmgreen & Dragset (2017); “Spaceliner,” curated by Barbara Heinrich, Arter, Istanbul (2015); “No One Belongs Here More Than You,” curated by Red Min(e)d, 54th October Salon, Belgrade (2013); “Dream and Reality,” Istanbul Modern (2011); “Hyper Real: The Passion of the Real in Painting and Photography,” curated by Susanne Neuburger and Brigitte Franzen, MUMOK, Vienna (2010); “Under My Feet I Want the World, Not Heaven” as part of Istanbul Next Wave, Akademie der Künste, Berlin (2009).
Her solo exhibitions include “The Eye of the Earth, The Mouth of the Ground”, Gypsum Gallery, Cairo (2022);“Entrusted Ground”,artSümer in Istanbul (2022); “The Trap,” Gypsum Gallery, Cairo (2016); “Stained Estate,” Françoise Heitsch Gallery, Munich (2015); “Please Clear the Dance Floor,” artSümer Gallery, Istanbul (2010).
She has participated in artist residencies at the Water Mill Center, New York; IASPIS Konstnärsnämnden The Swedish Arts Grants Committee, Stockholm; MAC VAL Museum, Vitry-sur-Seine, Paris; Pioneer Works, New York; Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris and Künstlerhaus Bremen. İlkin was part of the artist collective Atıl Kunst, between 2006 and 2013. İlkin lives and works in Istanbul.