Name
Batu Bozoğlu
About
Bozoglu (1983) is a performance artist, focusing on creating interactive performance platforms which explore the relationship between the audience and the artist, and the politics of participation in art. These platforms invite the audience to partake on the production of the artwork, where the influence of these interactions has a definite and fundamental effect on the work itself. The works try to generate issues of authorship, a conflict of interest and initiate acts of empowerment and/or exploitation between the artist and the participants. These performances aim to broaden and/or challenge the medium by questioning the roles of all parties involved. By situating themselves in the praxis of everyday life and the private sphere, they try to blur the boundaries between the artistic and mundane.
Bozoglu’s recent work draws heavily from the experience of the Great War with the mechanized, random nature of its carnage and the helplessness and disillusionment it brought upon its subjects. Reflecting these issues, themes pertaining to random chance, vulnerability, submission, trauma and human-vs-machine play a great role in these artworks.
Bozoglu received his BA in Painting from Marmara FFA and his MA in VAVCD from Sabanci FASS. His MA thesis titled “Practice of Life as a Work of Art” argues that the praxis of everyday life can be transformed into an artistic medium if and when the artist opens its life and persona to concrete and intrusive manipulations from the audience and provides aesthetic documentation for these manipulations. He was granted his PhD from Marmara IFA, Dept. of Painting with his thesis titled “Dada and the Rise of the New Modernity: Aesthetics of Destruction” focusing on the influence of the psychological and material violence of the Great War on the art and artists of Dada. His thesis frames the Dadaist attitude and the artworks as a conduit for the random violence and extensive destruction brought by the war, which aesthetically express and systematically implement the same destruction to the arts, the artist and society as a whole.
Bozoglu lives and works in Istanbul and is a member of Performistanbul.
Residencies:
2018 "Asia Discovers Asia Meeting 2018", ADAM2, Taipei
2017 "Considering Time" by Marilyn Arsem, Venice Performance Art Week 2017, Venice
2015 "Dialogue Transformation: Turkey-Armenia Normalization Process", Conflict Resolution, Yerevan-Istanbul
2014 "BecomeBecome Masterclass", Plymouth Uni. / Planetary Collegium, Kefalonia (Greece)
2012 "Kasa Gallery Summer Residency", Kasa Gallery, Istanbul
Exhibitions
Acının Fotoğrafları: American Board of Commissioners for Foreign at Salt Online
A 4 week workshop where the civilian trauma of WW1 in Ottoman Empire was discussed via Salt's American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions archive.
Project: Survive at Stay(A)Live, Performistanbul
77 days long performance art piece
Superimposed at Elgiz Museum, Istanbul
with the performance “Excavation”
Ayn-i Galip at Pasaj, Istanbul
with “Recoil”
This is not a Performance at Daire Sanat, Istanbul
with objects from “Just 15 Minutes”
Dadamobile at Public Space, Boston, MA
with Dadamobile scores “VIP” and “Survey”
Artist Lab ADAM 2018 Presentation at Hakka Cultural Centre, Taipei County, Taiwan
with “Ghost Nations”
Needed: You at PCSAA, Istanbul
with “Project: PC”
Venice Performance Art Week 2017 at Palazzo Mora, Venice
with “It’s all about luck.”
The Cycle (Solo) at Sanatorium, Istanbul
with “The Cycle”
Istanbul Biennial: A Good Neighbour at Galata Rum Okulu, Istanbul
Performer for the artwork “Domain of Things” by Pedro Gómez-Egaña
Performance Night at Blokart Space, Istanbul
with “Just 15 minutes”
ESSL Awards Turkey Nominees Exhibition 2015 at Tophane-i Amire, Istanbul
with “Homework: Make My Day”
Supermarket Art Fair 2015 at Telefonplan, Stockholm, Sweden
with “He Who Gets Slapped”
Venice Experimental Cinema and Performance Art Festival at International Artexpo, Venice
with “Love Thy Neighbour!”
Globality and Locality at MU Cumhuriyet Museum, Istanbul
with “Trans.it”
Mamut Art Project 2013 at Antrepo, Istanbul
with “Homework: Make My Day”
Homework: Make My Day (Solo) at Kasa Gallery, Istanbul
with “Homework: Make My Day”
Works by student of Wieslaw Zaremba at Tuzla Municipal Gallery, Istanbul
with drawings from "Chronicles of an Insiginificant Man
Flow at SSM Sabanci Museum, Istanbul
with large canvases from “Chronicles of an Insignificant Man”
Flat Printing Workshop Student’s Exhibition at Gallery DA, Gdansk
with print from “Chronicles of an Insignificant Man”
Pist//Reserved at Pist, İstanbul
with “Bobin Yayin Radio Project”
Graduation class of 2001 at Marmara FFA, Istanbul
Inside-Out at Marmara Uni. FFA, Istanbul
Education
PhD in Painting
Marmara Uni. Institute of Fine Arts, Turkey
Thesis: “DADA AND THE RISE OF THE NEW MODERNITY:
AESTHETICS OF DESTRUCTION
”
MA in Visual Arts and Visual Communication Design
Sabanci Uni. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Turkey
Thesis: “The Practice of Life as a Work of Art”
BFA in Painting
Marmara Uni. Faculty of Fine Arts, Istanbul
Experience
Associate Professor
Okan Uni. Dept. VCD, Istanbul
Lecturer
Okan Uni. Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture, Istanbul
Teaching courses such as Illustration, Drawing, Color, 2D Design and Project Development
Research Assistant
Okan Uni. Faculty of Fine Arts, Turkey
Department of Visual Arts
TA
Sabanci Uni. Faculty of Art and Social Sciences, Istanbul
Assisted courses in the department of VAVCD such as Introduction to Painting and Art&History in Museum.
Specialties
- painting
- drawing
- performance
- Dada
- World War One