Gülsün Karamustafa

Gülsün Karamustafa — Biography

Born in Ankara on 2 December 1946, Nigâr Gülsün Karamustafa is the daughter of radio presenter Hikmet Münir Ebcioğlu and graduated from the Istanbul Academy of Fine Arts in 1969, trained in Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu's studio. She became politically active through the academy's boycotts and occupations, and married Sadık Karamustafa, whom she met during one such occupation, in 1970. Shortly after the 12 March 1971 memorandum she was arrested for harbouring a political fugitive, served six months in prison, and had her passport revoked until 1987; the paintings she based on her prison observations were first shown years later in her solo exhibition A Promised Exhibition. Working across painting, sculpture, installation and video, she has explored rural-to-urban migration, gender, identity and the trauma left by the coups of 1960, 1971 and 1980, and has shown in international biennials from São Paulo and Gwangju to Havana and Istanbul since the 1990s, with work held in collections such as Tate Modern and the Guggenheim. She entered cinema in 1984 as art director on Atıf Yılmaz's A Sip of Love, and won the Special Jury Award at the Fajr Film Festival in 1991 for My Cinemas, which she co-directed with Füruzan in 1990. She received the Prince Claus Award in 2014 and the Roswitha Haftmann Award in 2021, and represented Turkey at the Venice Biennale in 2023-2024. Her daughter is graphic designer Ayşe Karamustafa; she continues to live and work in Istanbul.