Osman Bozkurt

A small window in my studio leads onto the rooftop; my only access to the outside world amid a group of tall buildings in one of the busiest areas of the city that has been deserted nowadays. This reminds me of the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük (Turkey) dwellings that people entered and left by means of ladders leading to the rooftops. I spend my days recovering material remains from the neighboring old building that was being torn down, a demolition was underway before the virus locked us in. Then I meticulously clean and classify my findings, looking for fragments of individual and collective histories. A very modest collection of Marseilles roof tiles with inscribed names allow me to identify the manufacturers, some bricks, concrete, and nails... Compiling a series of photographs that was taken at the dig, Domestic Archeology / Covid-19 Studio Logs chronicles my ongoing fieldwork during the days of quarantine.

Bio

Osman Bozkurt (Istanbul, Turkey, 1970) uses photography and video to map the fraught spaces that are between public and private. His scenes from everyday life are humbling quotidian portraits charged with political resistance. He often works with mostly overlooked materials in urban dwellings such as the brown tape that becomes a short-term solution to fixing broken handles and to marking territory and that covers every inch of cardboard boxes in Laleli district—a bustling shopping district in Istanbul (Tape Republic, 2009) or the remaining traces of erased graffiti on Istanbul’s walls (Post Resistance, 2013). He has made several interventions that exemplify the creative and improvised use of public space. He also reflects on the disappearance of the balconies in the new buildings built as part of the gentrification projects taking over Istanbul.

Bozkurt is the co-founder of PiST/// Interdisciplinary Project Space, a non-for-profit, independent artist-run space in Istanbul, founded in 2006.