Venue:Museum Morsbroich
Gustav-Heinemann-Str. 80
51377 Leverkusen
How can we give shape to the vulnerable and fragile? How much do we show of our self, what do we hide? How does cultural and biological heritage affect our identity and relationship to ourselves and others?
In her works, Cihan Çakmak, who grew up near Worpswede as the daughter of Kurdish immigrants from Turkey, often plays with the ambivalence of closeness and distance as well as showing and hiding (oneself). With a self-confident gaze, her photographs deal with questions of identity, self-assertion, culturally inherited values, and interpersonal relationships.
We talk to Cihan Çakmak, who is currently represented in the exhibition yours truly with her photograph em fractal (2021), about her work, the meaning of the symbols, props and postures she uses, and what it is like to assert yourself as a woman in the art world.
Cihan Çakmak (born 1993 in Osterholz-Scharmbeck) lives and works in Leipzig. She studied photography in Dortmund and Lisbon and did advanced training in New York City. She then studied photography at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig, where she earned her diploma and Meisterschüler:innen title with Prof. Tina Bara. Cihan Cakmak is, among other things, the winner of the Paula Modersohn-Becker Young Artist Award (2020) and the Rössing Award for Photography (2021).
