Hande Sever
Hande Sever is a Los Angeles-based artist and author from Istanbul, Turkey. Her transdisciplinary and concept-driven practice combines lens-based image-making with organic materials to unearth the shared materiality underpinning colonial histories. Archival research is the main drive of her practice as she excavates lost texts and distant images to bring attention to events erased from the collective consciousness and recontextualizes transnational instances of mass violence and political struggle in the process. Her research-based works have been presented at Hauser & Wirth Somerset, UK; MAK Museum Vienna, Austria; CICA Museum Seoul, South Korea; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, IL; A.I.R. Gallery, New York; BOX Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; and other international venues.
A Casket for All Seasons
Hande Sever delves into the history of Sanasaryan Han, an edifice found nestled within Istanbul’s tourist-laden neighborhood of Sirkeci, to create a dialogue among memories which have not previously been connected.
Aridification as Protagonist: Kuzgun Acar’s Ecocriticism
While becoming the tallest skyscraper in the nation after its completion, Emek İşhanı uniquely amalgamated the opposing sentiments of anti-imperialism and pro-American rhetoric that marked the Cold War in Turkey through the commission of a public artwork by leftist Turkish-Ethiopian artist Kuzgun Acar (1928-1976) to be hung on its entrance facade in 1965.
