Yaşam Şaşmazer uses the human psyche, in its dark and bright side, as her main site of investigation. With her realistic sculptures, she questions in turn the notions of identity, doppelgänger, the self & the other, the individual in his social or natural environment, willingly deconstructing the clichés and cultural structures that surround these ideas. In her current works, she deals with the specific relationship between the mankind and nature focusing on its contradictions and malfunctions, which lead her observations to the themes of invasion, decay, ruins, remembrance and transience of memories. Şaşmazer lives and works in Istanbul.
Her solo exhibitions include Dark Matter (Kunstverein Ingolstadt, Ingolstadt, Germany, 2017), Metanoia (Torrance Art Museum, Los Angeles, USA, 2016; BERLINARTPROJECTS, Berlin, Germany, 2015; Tophane-i Amire Culture and Art Center, Istanbul, Turkey, 2014), Doppelgänger (Künstlerhaus Marktoberdorf, Germany, 2012), Illuminated Darkness (Aubin Gallery, London, United Kingdom, 2011). Selected group exhibitions she participated in are: The Clandestine Life of Objects (Evliyagil Dolapdere, Istanbul, Turkey, 2019), Sorrowful and Restless: A selection of the Papko Art Collection (İstanbul, Turkey), Home is Where The He(art) Is (Galerie Paris-Bejing, Paris, France, 2018), Pulsanti Aperietur (The Abdulmecid Mansion, Istanbul, Turkey, 2017), Replacement (Rampa Istanbul, Istanbul, Turkey, 2016), Glasstrees Gotika: Collateral Event of the 56th Biennale Arte (Venice, Italy, 2015), Encounters: Contemporary art from Turkey in Korea (ARA Art Square, Seoul, South Korea, 2012), Confessions of Dangerous Minds (Saatchi Gallery, London, United Kingdom, 2011).
Courtesy Zilberman
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