I  am Türk, Gavin Turk,  2012
Single channel video with sound, 01’39’’
Video link

In 2012, while Gizem Karakas was working at Galerist in Istanbul, Gavin Turk held his first solo exhibition in Turkey. As an artist whose surname is “Turk,” he engaged in a deliberate conflation, appropriating the term as both a personal name and a cultural signifier. The exhibition included a series of acrylic paintings titled Eye, referencing the “evil eye” and the ubiquitous blue eye beads, central symbols in Turkish visual culture.

I Am TÜRK, Gavin TURK is a tribute video to Turk and his exhibition. Reworking his strategies of appropriation and self-referentiality, the piece turns them back onto the artist, offering a reflexive gesture - his “own medicine”- inflected with an added layer of Turkishness.