BRESLER RESIDENCY: KANAT AKAR

Kanat Akar, Neighbor, Two Channel Video, 17 minutes

As an artist, through photography and video, I focus on socially and politically driven contemporary issues, claiming space to explore larger ideas through people’s everyday stories and experiences. On my work, my recent focus is the discussion of temporality and displacement and I aim to ask the following questions by creating my visual work: How do we define what it means to belong somewhere? What does it mean not to belong somewhere? What does it mean to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? How does it feel to be a problem? I focus on the clues that might give hints to these questions by telling stories about myself and the people around me in the social and political atmosphere that we are surrounded by. During my time at the Bresler Residency I would like to approach to these questions and further investigate the ideas that constitute home and the meaning of belonging to somewhere and/or displacement with a new project. Those notions and feelings are highly subjective and belong to the human experience, however, they are being affected by the social and political circumstances and atmosphere. Hence, by using digital and analog photography, as well as video, I would like to discuss the concepts of temporality and displacement with my visual work by investigating the idea of home and the sense of belonging. Home: either a place that gives the feeling of safety or a destination, a place that is far and not yet reached.

About the Artist: Kanat Akar (1991) is a photographer and a visual artist from Ankara, Turkey and currently living in Baltimore, Maryland. Using photography and electronic media in his practice as a communication tool for the visual investigation of the human experience, he aims to tell effective stories about people in a politically and socially loaded environment that we are living in. He received his MFA degree from Maryland Institute College of Art, Photographic and Electronic Media Department in 2018. He also has a BA degree in Economics (2014) from Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey.

 

 

 


About the Fleur and Charles Bresler Residency: In honor of VisArts patrons, Fleur and Charles Bresler, VisArts invites applications and proposals from local, national, and international artists for a four month residency at VisArts at Rockville. This residency provides a unique opportunity for a dynamic individual artist or collaborative artist team to create a new body of work, evolve an existing body of work, or develop a project in a stimulating, supportive environment. Studio space is provided free of charge. The residency encourages interaction, dialogue and exploration both within the VisArts artist community and the larger Rockville community as well. The residency offers the gift of time and space to three artists and/or collaborative artist teams each year to experiment and realize new work. The current Bresler Resident Artists present their work in a solo exhibition at VisArts.

Learn more about the Fleur And Charles Bresler Residency.