Captivating strangers: Turkish artist Kutlug Ataman creates videos in which people reveal their psychological fixations, social grievances, and artistic or spiritual quandaries. His astute installations place the viewer squarely in the midst of these absorbing lives

Art in America, Feb, 2005 by Gregory Volk

These are good days for Kutlug Ataman, a 43-year-old Turkish artist who divides his time between Istanbul, London and elsewhere. He has a new video installation in the Carnegie International, for which he won the Carnegie Prize; he was a finalist for Great Britain's prestigious Turner Prize; he recently presented another impressive video piece at Lehmann Maupin in New York; and he is also preparing for a retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney later this year. That's not bad for someone who wasn't even exhibiting visual art per se until 1997, although he had been making experimental and feature films for a while, oftentimes to considerable acclaim.

Ataman and the conceptually minded sculptor Ayse Erkmen are now broadly recognized as the two premier contemporary Turkish artists; like Erkmen, Ataman is one of the few Turkish artists in recent memory to enjoy a robust international reputation. Most of his career, however, has transpired far from his home country, due to the fact that, aside from the acclaimed Istanbul Biennial, Turkey has not developed an arts infrastructure capable of supporting such a professional life. It was the 1997 version of the Istanbul Biennial, curated by Rosa Martinez, that flint brought Ataman to the attention of a large international art audience, for his kutlug ataman's semiha b. unplugged (1997), a quirky documentary concerning the (at the time) 87-year-old, decidedly eccentric Turkish opera singer Semiha Berksoy. This was also my first encounter with Ataman's work.

In the mid-1980s, Ataman studied drama and film at UCIA, where there were ample opportunities to make connections to what is called in those parts "the Industry." Therefore, it is interesting to note that all of Ataman's major works to date are actually about as un-Hollywood as you can get. The slow-moving, single-screen projection kutlug ataman's semiha b. unplugged is a perfect example. It is some eight hours long, although the audience can easily jump in at any point, and is devoid of action and plot. You can forget about digital wizardry or any other razzle-dazzle effect, although subtle shifts in camera angle and a quiet attention to detail make it visually captivating.

Ataman taped Berksoy in her home, with a handheld camera, giving things a lush, grainy, improvisational, ever-shifting, home-movie look. What one sees almost exclusively is Berksoy herself (wearing outlandish clothes, wearing just stockings and undergarments, wearing smeared-on lipstick and caked-on rouge and mascara) as she essentially disgorges her life. She acts out opera scenes and sings snatches of arias, preens before the mirror as if about to go onstage and discusses her prolific expressionist painting--a medium she turned to late in life. Throughout the subtitled video, she speaks of art as an exalted, rarefied zone far beyond and superior to normal life; but she also tells of her childhood, her cherished mother who died young, her tormented father and her own career as a singer, including professional triumphs. She also discusses the many obstacles she faced in Turkey, where opera was often perceived as a European import, and where her flamboyant persona flagrantly challenged social restrictions.

When Berksoy speaks of her mother, she often addresses her words directly to a partially clothed mannequin whose face is outfitted with a photograph of Berksoy's actual mother. There is something both endearing and creepy about this ersatz "Mummy," as Berksoy calls her, or it. This is one of many times when you think Berksoy might truly be nuts, and it's also one of many times when you feel uncertain and uncomfortable. You're not sure if what you're seeing is staged or for real. You're also something of a voyeur, and Berksoy's crammed rooms along with her equally crammed mind feel claustrophobic and disturbing. Still, there is something charming about how she constantly reinvents herself, remakes her life and continues to act like a prima donna, although the public's attention has long since turned elsewhere; her body has grown old, and her voice has turned raspy. In between ad hoc performances, Berksoy fumbles through boxes of well-thumbed letters, reads from them and muses on the past. Her solipsistic ruminations signal a true diva's self-absorption, yet they also have a sneaky evocative power. They become a portrait of life in 20th-century Turkey, of a flamboyant, proto-feminist artiste making do in a male-dominated culture and also of a proud woman (with her million memories) beset by encroaching morality.

Berksoy, who recently died at the age of 94, is a real-life figure, not played by an actor, and Ataman's process was strikingly intimate. He was there by himself, in another person's home, and in another person's psyche and life, not so much recording what he wanted to see, but what she wanted to present and reveal. As with most of Ataman's works, conversational, unscripted language is a potent force here: how Berksoy speaks, how she uses language to construct not only her identity but the epic story of her life, how language is a vehicle for communication and discovery but also for self-delusion and concealment. What slowly accrues is a complex layering of personal memory, ambitions, sadness, sensuality, playfulness, disappointment, love, obsession and canny positioning, all mixed with powerful social and historical forces.