“Passing On”
Nancy Atakan

Artist Talk and Book Launch

February 4, 2016 / 18:30

Complementing the exhibition This is Not a Love Song: Video Art and Pop Music Crossovers and presented as part of the program “Music Embodied”, artist Nancy Atakan talks about her practice and her new book “Passing On” published by Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg, Germany, following a screening of her videos.

Over the past decades American-Turkish artist Nancy Atakan has developed a practice in which the past and future intersect in order to complicate our understanding of the present. With a great sensitivity to how memory, history, gender, identity and national narratives operate, in particular in relation to the female body, Atakan situates herself as an artist of a mixed background who occupies an in-between position. Passing On includes a selection of Atakan’s oeuvre made over the past decade, but concentrates on works that highlight professional women who were born in the Ottoman period, matured and worked in the Turkish Republic, and whom - the artist believes - should not be forgotten. Merging fact with fiction, and her own personal story, Passing On traces a female lineage that remembers, inspires and passes poetic strength and value on to posterity.

About Nancy Atakan
Born in the USA, the visual artist and art historian, Nancy Atakan, received her BA degree from Mary Washington College in 1968 before moving to Istanbul, Turkey, in 1969. Since then, she has lived and worked in Istanbul, where she received her PhD in art history from Mimar Sinan University in 1994 and has taught at the Bosphorus University and Robert College. From May through June of 2006, she participated in a residency program concentrating on the relationship between art and language at the Banff Art Center in Alberta, Canada. She has published numerous articles and two books entitled, Arayışlar, Yapı Kredi publications, Istanbul, 1998, and Sanatta Alternatif Arayışlar, Karakalem publications, Izmir, 2008. In 2008 with the artist Volkan Aslan, she opened 5533, an Istanbul non-profit off space.

The event is free of admissions and will be in Turkish and English with consecutive translation.

Temporary Exhibition

This is Not a Love Song

Pera Museum presented an exhibition titled This is Not a Love Song: Video Art and Pop Music Crossovers which traced the genealogy of the relations between video art and pop music.

This is Not a Love Song

Istanbul’s Historical Peninsula in 18th and 19th Century Paintings

Istanbul’s Historical Peninsula in 18th and 19th Century Paintings

With the Topkapı Palace, the center of political authority until the 19th century, and many other examples of classical Ottoman and Byzantine architecture included in its premise the Historical Peninsula is the heart of the Empire. 

Blurred Reminiscences  <br>Andra Ursuta

Blurred Reminiscences
Andra Ursuta

Pera Museum, in collaboration with Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV), is one of the main venues for this year’s 15th Istanbul Biennial from 16 September to 12 November 2017. Through the biennial, we will be sharing detailed information about the artists and the artworks. 

Explore the Museum with the Little Yellow Circle!

Explore the Museum with the Little Yellow Circle!

Published as part of Pera Learning programs, “The Little Yellow Circle (Küçük Sarı Daire)” is a children’s book written by Tania Bahar and illustrated by Marina Rico, offering children and adults to a novel learning experience where they can share and discover together.