Artist
Ahmet Ögüt
Via Istanbul, Turkey
Ahmet Ögüt is an internationally renowned sociocultural initiator and conceptual artist. For his work, Ögüt consistently seeks out collaborators from outside of the art world, finding unique ways to grapple with complex social issues ranging from migration to civil unrest with a sense of humor. Before his ongoing exhibition, “Strategies for Radical Democracy,” at The Blackwood Gallery in Toronto (2014), Ögüt has had upwards of 20 solo exhibitions and performances in the last decade, in Europe, the United States and Australia. Most recently, during a month-long residency in Helsinki the artist collaborated with local firemen in creating a temporary book-printing workshop on the interior of a fire truck, culminating in the collaborative printing of 1,500 banned books in the weeklong performance entitled Fahrenheit 451:Reprinted (2013). Ögüt has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2010 Europas Zukuft prize from the Museum of Contemporary Art (GfZK Leipzig), the Future Generation Art Prize (2012) as well as the Visible Award for his project The Silent University (2012), which sprang from a yearlong residency with the Tate Modern and the Delfina Foundation in London. His works were shown at the 19th Biennale of Sydney (2014), Performa 13, The Fifth Biennial of Visual Art Performance, the 12th Istanbul Biennial (2011), the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009), the New Museum Triennial, New York (2009) and the 5th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2008), among others. Ögüt holds a BA in Fine Art from Hacettepe University and an MA in Art and Design from Yildiz Teknik. He currently resides between Amsterdam and Istanbul.
