Exhibition by: Pinar Yolaçan’s
As part of the year long focus on Photography and Art, Fashion and Identity, CCA,Lagos is pleased to present Turkish artist Pinar Yolaçan’s critically acclaimed series “Maria”, (2007) a stunning collection of 12 stunning life size portrait photographs of African-Brazilian women emerging from stark black backgrounds.
Curitorial Statement
As part of the year long focus on Photography and Art, Fashion and Identity, CCA,Lagos is pleased to present Turkish artist Pinar Yolaçan’s critically acclaimed series “Maria”, (2007) a stunning collection of 12 stunning life size portrait photographs of African-Brazilian women emerging from stark black backgrounds. Taken over a twelve month period in Itapurica, Bahia, Brazil, Yolaçan’s images are evocative of Old Master portraits, possessing the psychological and emotional immediacy of the Romantic genre. In this series the artist subverts regality by dressing her sitters in elaborate hand sewn couture costumes with trimmings of ‘unusual’ materials such as velvet, satin, tripe, placenta and sheep’s testicles. Through this series Yolaçan engages with issues of beauty, the body, colonialism, and death as a way of broaching the “impermanence of things.”
Pinar Yolaçan was born in Ankara, Turkey in 1981. She attended London’s Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and Chelsea School of Art and Design, and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts at Cooper Union in New York City. She has participated in several international exhibitions including most recently Dress Codes, the 3rd ICP Triennal of Photography, International Centre for Photography, New York, (2009), Tracking Traces KIASMA, Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, (2009) In the light of Play CCA,Lagos at Durban Art Gallery, Durban, and 2nd Johannesburg Art Fair, South Africa (2009), Turkish Realities: Positions in Contemporary Photography from Turkey, Fotografie Forum International Frankfurt, Germany (2008). She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York and Istanbul, Turkey.
