Kutluğ Ataman

Kutluğ Ataman — Biography

Kutluğ Ataman is one of the few artists to leave a mark in both cinema and contemporary art: known at film festivals for his features and in museums and biennials for his video installations. His work looks at marginalised people through identity, gender, social roles and ethnicity, and is held in collections including MoMA, Tate Modern, the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection and the Carnegie Museum of Art.

After Galatasaray High School he studied film at Mimar Sinan University and the Sorbonne, then earned his degree and a fine arts master's at UCLA, finishing in 1988. He began with short films and returned to Turkey in 1994 to make his first feature, Karanlık Sular. Lola ve Bilidikid opened the Panorama section of the Berlin Film Festival, followed by İki Genç Kız, adapted from Perihan Mağden's novel, the mock documentary Aya Seyahat, and Kuzu, which premiered in Berlin in 2014. In parallel, he entered the art world in 1997 at the Istanbul Biennial with a video work about Semiha Berksoy, and went on to show at the Venice and Berlin biennials and Documenta 11. In 2004 he won the Carnegie Prize for Küba and was shortlisted for the Turner Prize for Twelve.

After his house in Erzincan won two international architecture awards in 2017, he turned his farm there into an architecture and art project. He has received the Golden Orange for best director and the Abraaj Group Art Prize, and in 2023 said he could not collect a royal award from the King of the Netherlands because a visa was refused.