Art Basel Paris: Kutlug Ataman, Küba (2004)

This October, Kutluğ Ataman’s Küba (2004), one of the defining moving image installations of the early twenty-first century, will be presented in Paris as part of the Art Basel Paris Public Program at the Chapelle des Petits-Augustins at the Beaux-Arts de Paris. First commissioned and produced by Artangel in London, Küba went on to be exhibited at the Carnegie International, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and other major international institutions, receiving the Carnegie Prize in 2005. The work centres on a tightly bounded settlement on the outskirts of Istanbul, since erased by the city’s rapid expansion. Across forty individual video monitors, residents speak directly to the camera about their lives, memories and understanding of the place they call home. Rather than imposing a single documentary narrative, Ataman allows the community to represent itself through distinct, autonomous voices that gradually coalesce into a powerful portrait of collective identity, belonging and solidarity.

The physical experience of Küba is inseparable from its meaning. Forty cathode-ray monitors fill the space with overlapping voices, stories and perspectives, inviting visitors to move freely between them and construct their own pathways through the work. No testimony is privileged over another; meaning emerges through the cumulative force of individual accounts. In replacing explanation and editorial hierarchy with encounter, Ataman radically reconfigured the relationship between documentary, portraiture and contemporary art. More than two decades after its creation, and now also a record of a community that no longer exists, Küba’s presentation at the Chapelle des Petits-Augustins offers a rare opportunity to encounter this seminal installation anew and underscores the continuing urgency of its exploration of community, displacement and collective identity.