From the Studio Osep Archive, circa 1968, Tayfun Serttas, 2009, giclee print on paper, edition 2 of 3, 150 x 80cm.
Date: | 10 November — 10 December 2010 |
Venue: | Delfina Foundation |
Artist talk and screening: | 16 November 2010 |
Osep Minasoglu is one of the oldest living studio portrait photographers in Istanbul. The artist Tayfun Serttaş has been collecting, recording and classifying his works for the past 10 years. A rarely encountered selection of works, the Studio Osep archive records the shifts in representational practices in Istanbul between 1953 and 1986. Presented as a body, and placed on a parallel perspective with the history of the Turkish Republic, these personal testimonies of individual memory gain a collective meaning: they articulate the social contradictions embedded in the recent history of the city.
For his exhibition at Delfina Foundation Tayfun Serttaş has re-curated the Studio Osep archive to achieve new and poetic associations. The selected photographs focus on the transforming everyday practices that have shaped the making of modern Turkey and question the evolving function of vernacular photography in relation to discourses around identity and the grander narrative of history.
To accompany the exhibition, on the 16 November Tayfun Serttas will give an artist talk discussing his practice in relation to Istanbul’s history of social, cultural and sexual diversity. The talk will be completed by a screening of two of Tayfun Serttas’ recent video works: Invoke (2009) and The Other, The Other and Beyond (2005).
Biography
Artist, writer and social scientist Tayfun Serttaş (b. 1982) lives in Istanbul and Bodrum. His main subject areas are urban anthropology, gender & minorities, cultural heritage & migration. Tayfun has exhibited his work internationally, including Centrun Sztuki Wspolczesnej (Warsaw, 2010), Galeri NON (Istanbul, 2009), Centre Pompidou (Paris, 2009) and Architekturmuseum (DAM Frankfurt, 2008). Stüdyo Osep, edited by Tayfun Serttaş, was published in 2009 by Aras.
Serttaş was a resident artist at Delfina Foundation as part of the 2010 edition of the Accented Residency, with the generous support of the British Council’s Creative Collaboration and Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Centre, Istanbul.
In partnership with
British Council – Creative Collaboration
Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Centrev