with Cihan Ҫakmak, artist and participant in the EMOP European Network exhibition RETHINKING IDENTITY with partner cities Luxemburg and Lisbon
and Melinda Matern, sociologist of art

“Cihan Ҫakmak’s narrations are sensitive and nuanced, but also ambivalent and intransigent. She opens up insights into her biography, venturing an archaeology of the self that allows her to become the archaeological site of a collective history and an intergenerational identity. But rather than being subsumed into identity, Kurdish or otherwise, she uses this critical encounter to lay bare and reappraise categories and categorisation – and thus also to put them up for discussion. In her “desire to be not so strongly identified” (Bini Adamczak), Cihan Ҫakmak thus denies observers the option of strolling around her art like a familiar locale. And it is ultimately this that makes her artistic work so attractive.” (Melinda Matern)