CREATING THE IMAGINATION OF CULTURAL HYBRIDITY: GÜLSÜN KARAMUSTAFA

Abstract

In Turkey, new trends, which are alternatives to traditional art production in terms of method,
material and subject, started to become visible as of the end of the 1970s. In the activities carried
out under the leadership of the State Academy of Fine Arts and accompanied by the intellectual
efforts of the Academy teachers based on philosophical discussions in the West, graduate students
they had the opportunity to exhibit new and different productions and to be visible. In this
generation, many artists who adopted new and different trends, beyond the classical painting and art
education in the Academy curriculum; One of them was Gülsün Karamustafa. In addition to
bringing local political and cultural elements to her artworks over the years, the artist has exhibited
a diversity of materials and attitudes; It has continued her production process uninterruptedly by
carrying it to the international level and has become one of the important names of Turkish
Contemporary Art. Karamustafa's studies, which have developed around the issue of migrationbased cultural hybridity, which emerged in the socio-political field of Turkey after 1980, have a
quality that makes sociological readings possible in the context of the political and cultural structure
of the country. Listening to the migration stories of her family since childhood; The political
background of her family members and her contact with Istanbul, which had a very active
sociological atmosphere during her youth, enables the artist to create the main themes in her
artworks. The imagery shaped by the period and environment in which she lived, in the context of a
cultural transformation-based objectivity, leads to the emergence of products in Karamustafa's
artworks, in which subjects such as migration, cultural hybridity, identity, arabesque and kitsch are
mostly discussed. The artist has produced a sincere and original art production by simultaneously
transferring social issues that she blended with her personal history in line with multiple materials
and artistic expression. This study aims to evaluate Karamustafa's work, her life and the social
memory of the period she lived in, that period’s cultural structure, political readings and her
testimony in the context of cultural hybridity.