Güler Ates

The outcome of this project was a multi layered text installation, which was shown with my photographs at Onze Lieve Vrouwekerk in Amsterdam in 2019. This work aimed to reflect further on the experience of modern-day refugees. The text was in Dutch, English, Arabic, Turkish and Zazaca.

Cultural displacement lies at the heart of my work. I have ongoing projects related to this subject and I often return to them. These patchworks resulted from workshops in the UK and Turkey since 2014. I have been thinking about them during the lockdown. I submitted a funding proposal. I hope I will be successful so I can make an installation from these patchworks. I would like to read one of my work-in progress poem to end this video.

Our second Artist Spotlight features Güler Ates, a Turkish artist based in the UK. Her photographs explore themes of cross-cultural displacement, diaspora and female identity, and will be on view in the Dadian Gallery in 2021. Ates has been in lockdown since early March, with limited access to her studio and restricted work space at home, so she has been writing poetry to capture her immediate feelings:

I am not a poet but I like to try to develop a visual language by using words. . . it’s a great way to keep working and being in the moment. In my art practice I often use text as a layer. In one of my recent projects I worked with refugees and asylum seekers in the UK, the Netherlands and in Turkey.