Rita Aktay

I am currently studying an MFA in Curating at Goldsmiths University of London. My background is in both Fine Arts, as a practicing visual artist, and in Visual Cultures, as a critical and cultural thinker. I am from Istanbul, and I have lived there most of my life; thus I am compelled to engage with East/West divides which reflect on societies as internal polarisations in the shape of Secular/Conservative, as well as tensions of Modern/Postmodern.

My main interests are in image-theory, influenced by the double-fold documentary and simulatory potentials of photography (plus other vision technologies) and their intensification through the acceleration of supposedly democratic communucation mediums, such as the internet. I am working on a project that is in its developmental stages, which will take the form of an image-based website, hosting content produced by a variety of cultural producers (artists/architects/anthropologists/public figures etc) who engage with Turkey, not as a nation-state, but as a locus of multiple histories, as a discursive formation.