Burçak Bingöl (born 1976) is a visual artist based in

Istanbul Istanbul is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, largest city in Turkey, constituting the country's economic, cultural, and historical heart. With Demographics of Istanbul, a population over , it is home to 18% of the Demographics ...

. Through a labour-intensive re-working of materials and objects, she explores ideas of belonging, cultural heritage, identity, decoration and failure. Her work uses a variety of mediums including ceramics, drawings, video, photography and installation.

Early life and education

Bingöl was born in

Görele Görele is a town in Giresun Province on the Black Sea coast of eastern Turkey. It is the seat of Görele District.

Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...

, and raised in

Ankara Ankara is the capital city of Turkey and List of national capitals by area, the largest capital by area in the world. Located in the Central Anatolia Region, central part of Anatolia, the city has a population of 5,290,822 in its urban center ( ...

. She received a PhD in Ceramics from

Hacettepe University Hacettepe University () is a public research university in Ankara, Turkey. It was established on 8 July 1967. It is ranked first among the Turkish universities by University Ranking by Academic Performance in 2021. The university has two main c ...

in 2008. She also studied music at

Ankara State Conservatory The Hacettepe University Ankara State Conservatory (), the first conservatory to be founded in the Republic of Turkey, was established in 1936 by a directive of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The conservatory is part of Hacettepe University. History ...

(1985–91) and photography at

The New School The New School is a Private university, private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for p ...

in New York (2008-9). Following her academic career, she began to focus on "rethinking the Ottoman ceramic heritage and completely devoted herself to its practice."

Works and special projects

''Broken II'' (2013)

The artist's "Broken" series uses ceramics to transform the products of mistakes, accidents, and even disasters, into products of success. Her second work in the series, ''Broken II'' (2013) entered the collection of

The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the third-largest museum in the world and the largest art museum in the Americas. With 5.36 million v ...

, New York in 2016. The work, composed of a three-dimensional square panel composed of irregularly broken pieces of stonepaste, includes a video of objects such as bottles and tiles violently dashed on the floor, which were later reassembled and decorated by the artist with colourful flower patterns connecting to centuries of traditional ceramics from the

Islamic Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...

world. According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, "This method of deconstructing a traditional Turkish art form or medium – then reassembling it into a contemporary object calls both to the artistic Ottoman and Islamic heritage and questions the idea of "what is art?"" is Bingöl’s response to Marcel Duchamp’s concept of ready-made art.

''Seyir'' (2014)

''Seyir,'' a large-scale ceramic work replicating the front of a truck, is an example of the way Bingol "strips objects of their original identity and function." Using traditional tile motifs, the work was made from terracotta with the moulds of an asphalt-pouring truck in Istanbul.

Lady Dior (2018)

In 2018, Bingöl was among eleven women artists invited by the fashion house Dior to reinterpret the Lady Dior bag as part of the brand's Lady Dior Art Project.

Exhibitions and Accolades

Bingöl has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Turkey and overseas. In 2004 she was a guest artist in the Second International Contemporary Ceramic Sessions in Buenos Aires and Obera. In 2006, Bingöl produced a solo exhibition “Syste-matic” at the end of an artist residency at Hunter College in New York. In 2007 she received an honorable mention award for her work “Constant Variable” in the International Miniature Ceramic Competition Exhibition in Zagreb, Croatia. Other solo exhibitions include 'Feeling the Blanks', Turkish Embassy Gallery, New York (2009);" 'Cabinet of Curiosities', Cda-Projects, Istanbul (2011); "A Carriage Affair', Galeri Zilberman, İstanbul, (2014).

Museum collections

Bingöl's works are in the museum collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; 21C Museum, Kentucky; Salsali Private Museum, Dubai; and Baksı Museum, Bayburt, Turkey.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bingöl, Burçak 1976 births Living people Turkish ceramists Ankara State Conservatory alumni