Artist: Kutluğ Ataman

Born in 1961 in Istanbul, Turkey, lives and works in Istanbul. Acclaimed film-aker and contemporary artist. Ataman’s works primarily document the lives of marginalized individuals, examining the ways in which people create and rewrite their identities through self-expression, blurring the line between reality and fiction.

At the 2004 Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, he won the top award and one of America’s highest honours in art, the Carnegie Prize. In the same year he was one of the four shortlisted artists for the Turner Prize, the UK’s most prestigious visual arts award and organised by the Tate Gallery. He is also the recipient of numerous awards for his feature film work.

His art works have been shown at Documenta (2002), Venice Biennale (1999) as well as Biennials in São Paulo (2002), Berlin (2001) and Istanbul (1997, 2003 and 2007)and Moscow (2207).

He was also in the London’s Tate Triennial in 2003. Recent solo exhibitions include Kutluğ Ataman: Paradise and Küba, Vancouver Art Gallery (2008), Paradise, the Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California (2007), De-Regulation With the Work of Kutluğ Ataman, MuHKA, Belgium (2006), Küba, Artangel (2005), Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2005), Long Streams, Serpentine Gallery, London and Nikolaj, Copenhagen Contemporary Art Centre, Denmark (2002).

His works are in major international collections, including MoMA New York, Thyssen- Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, the Dimitris Daskalopoulos Collection, Athens and the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh.

In 2009 Mesopotamian Dramaturgies - a multi-element new project which included Strange Spacce- has been exhibited at Lentos Museum in Linz, as part of the programme for Linz European Capital of Culture 2009.

His work fff has been shown at Thomas Dane Gallery, London in February - March 2009 and will be featured in London’s Whitechapel Gallery’s programme following the gallery’s reopening in 2009/10.

Curator: Cristiana Perella

Cristiana Perrella (Rome, 1965) was curator, from 1998 to 2008, of the Contemporary Arts Program at the British School at Rome, where she developed a series of events focused on dialogue between the British and the Italian scene, opening up the program to an increasingly wider range of interests, including music, video and film. She curated solo shows of both emerging and established artists like Adam Chodzko, Chris Cunningham, Richard Billigham, Martin Creed, Nick Relph and Oliver Payne, Mike Nelson, Ian Kiaer, Douglas Gordon, just to name a few, alongside exhibitions of Italian artists like Vedova Mazzei, Paolo Canevari and Francesco Vezzoli. She also curated large video surveys such as "Sweetie - Female Identity in British Video of the 80s and 90s" and "Videovibe - Art, Music and Video in the UK", as well as a touring retrospective about Leigh Bowery and a dynamic program of events, including talks, live performances and screenings. She initiated the BSR series of commissions "Viva Roma!", inviting British artists to make site-specific works on Rome, inspired by any aspect of the city. In this framework, she commissioned and produced projects by Cerith Wyn Evans, Mark Wallinger, Yinka Shonibare, Scanner, Sophy Rickett, Jonathan Monk and Chris Evans.

She was part of the curatorial board of the 1st Biennial of Valencia, of the 1st and the 3rd edition of FotoGrafia - the International Festival of Photography of Rome, of Videozone 2 - the International Biennial of Video Art in Tel Aviv, and of Pandaemonium - the Biennial of Moving Images 2001, at the LUX Centre in London.

As an independent curator she has curated and organized many exhibitions on an international level, including the recent "I Ka Nye Tan: Seydou Kedta and Malick Sidibc Photographers in Bamako" at the H.C. Andersen Museum, Rome; Taboo - The Art of Leigh Bowery and London Club Culture, at DA2 Museum in Salamanca, and "neocon. Contemporary Returns to Conceptual Art", at Apexart, New York.

She was the founding curator of SACS, a Regional Agency for Contemporary Art in Sicily, from 2007 to 2008.

Besides several monographs on contemporary international and Italian artists, she has published two survey books on the Italian art scene of the '90s, "Nuova Scena Artisti italiani degli anni Novanta, (A New Scene - Italian Artists of the Nineties)" Mondadori, 1995, and "Nuova Arte Italiana; Esperienza visiva ed estetica della generazione anni Novanta (New Italian Art - Visual and Aesthetic Experience of the Nineties Generation)", Castelvecchi, 1998.

She was a contributor to the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto from 1998 to 2005. Since 2003 she has taught a course on Contemporary Art at the University of Chieti, Italy.