Bio:
Arda Asena is an interdisciplinary artist from Istanbul, Turkey. They received their undergraduate degree from Parsons the New School for Design, pursued a certificate program from the International Center of Photography (ICP) and a MFA graduate from SAIC. They have been awarded residencies at Institut für Alles Mögliche (Berlin, Germany), POUSH (Paris, France) and Praxis Fiber Workshop (Cleveland, OH). Their work have been exhibited at Galleria Acta Internationale (Rome, Italy), Galerist (Istanbul, Turkey), Field Projects (New York, NY), Filter Photo (Chicago, IL), Fiber Arts International (Pittsburgh, PA), MENART Fair (Paris, France), and LRRH (Düsseldorf, Germany).
Artist Statement:
Asena’s practice is based in photography, sculpture, painting and textile, and invested in establishing cross-disciplinary connections. Through the translation of similar ideas across mediums, they are interested in the nuances that emerge through the materiality of each artistic form. Their work explores the abstraction that occurs in these moments of translation as generative opportunities to complicate notions of identity, social-cultural experiences and ways of being more broadly. Abstraction allows for a meditative orientation to the interior landscapes of emotions, desires, vulnerabilities and contradictions we each possess. Asena engages a visual language that attends to the concept of secretive eroticism, which they use as a reflection on tactics often employed by queer people as a mode of survival amidst social and cultural violence. Asena claims illegibility and opacity as critical stances in his work, affirming the refusal to be read and categorized.