Hande Sever is an artist, technologist and theorist working at the intersections of decoloniality, vernacular architecture, ecosophy and emerging technologies. Her writing has been published by Getty Research Journal, Art Institute Review, Stedelijk Studies, Journal of Arts & Communities, and X-TRA Contemporary Art Quarterly, among others. As an artist, her work often takes up her family’s history of persecution to explore divergent lines of inquiries addressing military violence, surveillance, and censorship. Sever’s 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 in New York; BOX Gallery in Los Angeles, CA. Sever received her MFA in Art and Technology from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and her double BA in Visual Arts and Computer Science from Emory University. She is currently a PhD candidate in the Art History, Theory, and Criticism program with a concentration in Art Practice at the University of California San Diego (UCSD), and prior to joining UCSD she was a visiting faculty member of CalArts’ Photography and Media program. Sever’s works have been supported with grants from the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation, California Arts Council, Getty Foundation and Henry Luce Foundation.
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.