Hello and Welcome.

Thank you for visiting. I’m Hakan Topal, an artist, engineer and sociologist, originally from Ankara and currently living and working in Brooklyn, NY since 2000. I was the co-founder of the international art collective, xurban_collective (2000-12), and have exhibited my collective and individual works widely in venues such as the 8th and 9th Istanbul Biennials; TBA21 in Vienna; Kunst-Werke in Berlin; ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, MoMA PS1; Platform in Istanbul; the 9th Gwangju Biennial;  ICP Museum in New York and the Turkish Pavilion at the 49th Venice Biennial.

I hold a B.S. in Engineering and an M.S. in Gender and Women’s Studies from Middle East Technical University, as well as a Ph.D. in Sociology from the New School for Social Research. I’m currently a full Professor of New Media and Art+Design at Purchase College, State University of New York.

Still Life, 2012-16, DEPO Istanbul, May 2022 As part of the Temporary Assembly of Living Things which brought together three related projects that have never been exhibited in Turkey.

My work engages with specific geopolitical, ecological, and cultural contexts. At the core of my approach is the creation of projects that transcend the traditional boundaries of artistic production and social research. I explore seemingly separate issues to uncover new conceptual connections. My documentary-based conceptual practice combines artistic and social research, archaeology, and a range of media—including text, photography, video, performance, architectural interventions, and installations—to reveal interconnected layers, hidden subjects, and overlooked social situations.

Southwest Asia—particularly Anatolia and Mesopotamia—has been central to my work due to its unique archaeological, historical, geopolitical, and ecological significance. My deep artistic commitment to the region has shaped me both personally and as an artist. Since the early 2000s, I have traveled to high-alert zones along the Turkish borders with Syria and Iraq, researched the impacts of neoliberal urban transformation and ecological destruction, and developed projects addressing complex issues such as the Armenian Genocide and armed conflicts in Turkey. More recently, I have expanded my focus to the US-Mexican border, using the Mexican Gray Wolf as a lens to explore the intricate ecological and geopolitical dynamics of the border regions.

The following narrative details my several projects—grouped together by subjects—that I have realized since 2000.

Collaboration has been an essential part of my art practice. Following the 1999 Adapazarı Earthquake, together with artist and architect Güven İncirlioğlu, I co-founded xurban_collective (2000-12), a transatlantic art and research group initially focused on global human-made and natural catastrophes. I presented my individual and collective commissioned projects at leading art museums and biennials worldwide. Major foundations have supported my work, including the Jerome Foundation, the Prince Claus Fund, the European Capital of Culture, SAHA Association, and more.

CONFESSIONS: STRONG FROM EAST-EASTWEST, 2001
Installation with C-Prints, vinyl wall text, and 3D VRML projection 
Commissioned by the 49th Venice Biennale, Turkish Pavilion

In 2001, as part of xurban_collective, I represented Turkey in the 49th Venice Biennale (2001) with a project titled Confessions: Strong from East-EastWest. An installation was set up in the Turkish Pavilion with a set of computer-generated VRML 3D graphics and photographs representing the coordinates of collective deep secrets, taboos, and sexuality—both true and false—through game and mockery. Written confessions in the installation brought out the most unspeakable violent desires and hatred, and invited audiences to playfully challenge postcolonial cliches.

Since the early 2000s, xurban_collective has actively explored the potentialities of networked space. For instance, Knit++ (2002), was developed as an online multiuser participatory social platform to bring interdisciplinary works into an assemblage. Knit++ drew an analogy between homeworkers of the 18th century (knitters) and digital/internet workers of the 21st century. Even though textile workers labored with the material, and digital workers with the immaterial, their struggles within the capitalistic production framework have been comparable. Similarly, Central Intelligence (2001) searched for ways to break away from reality instituted by the media, and it was an invitation to reclaim the political within the gloomy post 9-11 era.

THE CONTAINMENT CONTAINED, 2003-07
Installation, c-prints, oil Container,  white-on-white vinyl wall text, Commissioned by the 8th International Istanbul Biennial

Borders & Conflict Zones

Following The Iraq War in 2003, the 8th Istanbul Biennial commissioned a new project. The Containment Contained (2003-07), the result of a 7,000 kilometer journey along the Turkish-Iraqi border region during July and August, 2003. It’s a work about a terrain defined by years of colonial interventions, nationalist wars, genocides and state violence, overlapped with complex archeological and historic circumstances. xurban_collective explored the idea of containment, both its literal and metaphorical manifestations; goods of high value have higher priority (oil and gas) than humanity; people are restrained from international mobility as the subjects of containment (in refugee camps, prisons, high-alert zones, so on). For the biennial presentation, xurban_collective appropriated an oil container for the exhibition space. It was a special steel tank, custom-built to fit underneath transport trucks, used for off-the-books transportation of diesel fuel from Iraq into Turkey. It was used from the first Iraq War in 1991 until the US/UN pressured Turkey to prohibit such trade in the early aughts. The exhibited container traveled long distances across borders through customs, control, and containment. Similar to old clay vessels with archeological value—such as amphoras of ancient eras—this oil container, a “ready-made” object, was presented along with large-format photographs of archeological sites and white-on-white wall text. It made a direct contradiction between the highly militarized modern-nation-state and ancient and neolithic eras. This project received recognition from critics and curators, and was later included in shows such as The Future of the Reciprocal Readymade (The use-value of art), apexart, New York; Political / Minimal, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz; and Time Present Time Past, Istanbul Modern. 

BOTANY CARCINOMA, 2010
C-Prints, two-channel video, rock sample from North-Eastern Anatolia, and vinyl wall text
Installation image at Blind Dates Project, Pratt Manhattan Gallery, New York

Over the years, with a sense of responsibility and dedication, I have continued to work on projects focusing on Eastern Anatolia. For instance, after five years of community engagement, dinners, conferences, and panel discussions with the post-Ottoman diaspora in New York—including Armenians, Greeks, Palestinians, Kurds, Turks, and Jews—we realized a group show at Pratt Manhattan Gallery, reflecting on the Armenian Genocide. For the Blind Dates: New Encounters from the Edges of a Former Empire exhibition, I presented a two-channel video work, photographs and a rock from the region, Botany Carcinoma (2010), based on a botanical survey of some of the old and empty Armenian villages in Northeast Turkey, as a way to think about trauma and memory, mourning and denial, displacement, collective identity and subjectivity within a historical horizon.

Similarly, for Still Life (2012-16), I conducted research in Roboski, a small village at the Turkish-Iraqi border, where 34 villagers were killed in 2011 by the Turkish military as “collateral damage” for the Turkish state’s war on terror. Right after the incident, the public was notified that the massacred individuals crossing the Iraqi border were villagers from Roboski who routinely smuggled goods from Northern Iraq–a trade that is well-known by both local authorities and military outposts. Following the incident, the Roboski families steadfastly demanded justice, yet  justice never arrived. For the Still Life project, I created a video installation composed of silent video portraits of the surviving Roboski family members and an artist book whose proceeds went to the families. Through durational images, I intended to highlight the political agency of the victim’s relatives in the face of injustice and continuing state violence and harassment. I presented this work as a keynote speaker at the Law and Politics in Turkey conference at Northwestern University (2018); and Bodies of Evidence conference at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart (2019). Recently, as part of my solo exhibition, Temporary Assembly of Living Things (2022), I exhibited this politically challenging work at Depo Istanbul.

 The Golden Cage, 2022
Video, 30'57" As part of an installation: Five-channel synchronized video, prints on clay, stamps, postcards and books

I have recently finalized a performance work, The Golden Cage (2022), based on the northern bald ibis (“kelaynak” in Turkish), the most endangered migratory bird in the Middle East. When Palmyra fell to ISIS, the kelaynak colony, which migrates from Northeast Africa to the Turkish-Syrian border, faced total extinction. Concentrating on this semi-wild colony within an eco-political geography at the Syrian border provoked many questions about migration, confinement, and the discourse of conservation and protection propagated by the state apparatus. Reflecting on what is happening in the Southeast of Turkey and Syria, and the ongoing refugee crises, these caged birds have provided immediate metaphorical connections to liberty, territory, statehood, nationalism, and belonging. The project was commissioned and presented by Mousonturm, Frankfurt; Aga Khan Museum, Toronto; and Depo Istanbul, all in 2022.

Neoliberal Transformation

Since the early 2000s, I have focused on neoliberal transformation and its effects on the urban context, social fabric, and ecology. Commissioned by ZKM, Karlsruhe, S.i.e.g.e.c.r.a.f.t (2004), composed of 4×5” slides, a two-channel synchronized projection, and computer animation, concentrated on the historical and contemporary notion of siege when it comes to a historic megalopolis. For Constantinople, “The Siege” was in 1453, when 50 dark days of complications between the Byzantines, Venetians, and Genovese—during a clash of opposite faiths—provoked the residents to abandon the city shortly before the fall of the Byzantium Empire. Today we can still see the remnants of the city walls in Istanbul 1,500 years after their construction, and 570 years after the siege.

With globalization, however, the siege comes in different ways and has completely different connotations. Extreme wealth inequality armed with the militarization of the urban environment, is characterized by defensive architectural arrangements, security gates, cameras, guards, police, and x-ray detectors. The flow of capital is symbolized by high-rise financial buildings, shopping malls, and global chain stores which rise as the new fortresses of 21st century globalization. Contemporary siege is not encircling the city from the outside, but rather, armed with rightwing ideologies, relentless capital flow transfigures societies from within—like a sewage overflow—fundamentally altering communities, corrupting individuals, and degrading ethical values. When xurban_collective was invited to participate in the Greater New York 2005 show at MoMA PS1, xurban_collective presented a version of this project, a two-channel synchronized video installation, which contemplated the relentless transformation of Istanbul and the urban destruction yet to come. This project was also presented at the Harbor exhibition at Istanbul Modern Museum in 2017.

Similarly, the Evacuation Series began in 2009 as a research project that aimed to scrutinize the formation of “glocal” communities by analyzing the architectural features of ad-hoc social spaces such as religious centers, martial arts schools, gyms, and yoga schools, which are usually carved out from ordinary underutilized commercial spaces. These new post-industrial spatial configurations—and the communities formed around them—posit thought-provoking questions about democratic social participation. In contrast to labor unions, student associations, and political parties, for-profit membership-based “community centers” depart from the agonistic democratic participatory framework and imply a “re-feudalization” of the public sphere. Mescids, yoga centers, and martial arts spaces share something in common as they are governed through somewhat archaic forms of authority and power characterized by the figure of a guru, imam/preacher, or a master. The first version of this project, The Sacred Evacuation, installed at Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21) in Vienna, and Arter in Istanbul, in 2010 and Tanas Berlin in 2011, included C-prints, carpets, clocks, perfumes, kilims, beads, a bookshelf, and vinyl wall text, concentrated on mescids—small mosque prayer rooms in Turkish (masjids in Arabic).

EVACUATION #2: UNDER ONE MINUTE, 2012
Installation with three-channel HD Video, sound track, 155 C-Prints, floor mat, weights, and jumping ropes
Installation image at ROUNDTABLE: The 9th Gwangju Biennale

For the second iteration at the Gwangju Biennial in 2012, Evacuation #2: Under One Minute, xurban_collective employed a three-channel HD Video, sound track, 155 c-prints, floor mat, lift weights, and jumping popes and I studied various forms of martial arts spaces in New York, Istanbul, Antwerp, Berlin, Seoul, and Gwangju. While observing micro-arrangements of power on martial arts floors, the central analysis was about the reconfiguration of the male body in a globalized world, presenting UFC fighters, politicians, and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies as the familiar faces of top to bottom forced globalization (and now, a decade after this project, it is interesting to see Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, who are both interested in martial arts, planning to fight each other in a cage).

The Sea of Marble: A Navigational Convergence (2009-2011) project was conceived in three parts to discuss seas as defined by the global trade and economy and by the flow of bodies as a possibility for retributive justice. Based on visual research in cities including Vienna, Athens, Marseille, Istanbul, Izmir, and New York, an exhibition and symposium took place in 2010 at Antrepo No:5, an old warehouse in Istanbul port as part of Istanbul European Culture Capital. In 4000 10×15 cm prints, and video and computer projections on 11 pedestals, it addressed the contemporary condition of port cities, characterized by large-scale commercial and residential developments under construction. A book The Sea Image, and a website based on the project gathered and archived its visual materials, presentations, and discussions in a unified format.

Political Ecology

In 2006, VOID: A View from Acropolis took place in Platform Garanti, Istanbul, and was based on an investigation of the conceptual framework between two neighboring sites in the city of Bergama; Pergamon’s Zeus temple—which was transferred to Berlin’s Pergamon Museum and an illegal gold mine. The idea of a dig (void) has been applied literally and conceptually to extract and collect archeological and botanical evidence from a site. For the exhibition, ten tons of earth taken from Bergama was transported to the gallery space, and presented as a mound in the window of Platform Garanti as a symbol of digging, alteration, and void. Large-format photographs depicted in minute detail the plants that blanket the archeological ruins in a protective layer, naturally filling voids and hiding excavations of the past. All these ideas were condensed and described through performative gestures and actions, executed and filmed at the archeological site of Bergama as a performance piece.

Over the years, I continued my research in Asia Minor, visiting coal mines and power plants. Soil.Water.Ash., I & II (2014, 2022) is composed of two performative videos and an installation produced during the Yatağan power plant worker’s strike against the privatization of the Yatağan, Yeniköy, and Kemerköy coal power plants and the ongoing Ikizkoy Resistance against the coal mine destroying the ancient forest. The project presented staged demonstrations, poetically explored some visible contradictions, and invited the audience to think about the rights of living and non-living things together. This project was presented at The Ultimate Capital is the Sun. Metabolism in contemporary art, politics, philosophy, and science exhibition at nGbK, Berlin (2014), and at Depo Istanbul (2022).

Beyond these recurring themes, through proposals, actions and performances, installations, and architectural interventions, I explored new ideas on materiality, the body, and collectivity. Over the years, I presented my commissioned work in numerous international art institutions not listed above, including at the International Center of Photography (ICP), New York; 8th Bucharest Biennial; Law Warschaw Gallery, Macalester College, Minnesota; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Bangkok University Gallery; and many others. Most recently, I contributed my work to exhibitions at Groundwork Gallery, Norfolk, and The Heong Gallery, Downing College, Cambridge University.

The Golden Cage, 2022
Two-channel video, prints on clay, stamps, postcards and books Performance and installation commissioned by Mousonturm, Frankfurt