Güler Ates, artist and photographer

Guler Ates is a contemporary artist and photographer, born in Mus, Turkey in 1977. Her work incorporates elements of theater with the context of the historical locations the images are created in. Her settings are often museums or residences in Europe, South America, the Middle East, or India. Her models appear as pillars of rich fabric absorbing the environment around them.

Ates has a degree in Fine Art: Painting, from the University of Marmara, Istanbul (1998), a Bachelor of Arts degree in Fine Art: Painting from Wimbledon School of Art, London (2004) and a Master’s degree in printmaking from Royal College of Art. She had been a Digital Print Tutor at the Royal Academy Schools since 2010.

Ates works with video, photography, printmaking and performance. Gender, faith, and identity are central themes in Ates’ work and at the heart lies an exploration into the experience of cultural displacement. Manifestations of her work are realised through performance and site-responsive activities that merge Eastern and Western sensibilities.

Eton College Library and She I, 2017 (photo), Güler Ates, (b.1977) Private Collection © Guler Ates Bridgeman Images

Güler Ates questions the relationship between the veil and the West, by setting the veiled female figure within a lush or historic European interior. The selected architectural sites hold specific links to colonialism, post-colonialism, and the ‘East’.

Ates has had exhibitions in The Netherlands, Italy, England, Portugal, Brazil, and India. Most recently, Ates had an exhibition with The Museum of Oriental Art in Turin, Italy. The exhibition was titled Shoreless and consisted of 20 images that were dispersed across the Art Site Fest 2019 tour route.

Voyage I, 2007 (photo), Güler Ates, (b.1977) Private Collection © Guler Ates Bridgeman Images

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