Another talking point public art piece is Kutluğ Ataman’s video installation Kuba (2005) presented in the Chapelle des Petits-Augustins at the Beaux-Arts de Paris as part of Art Basel Paris’s public programme and presented by Niru Ratnam gallery. The work, which shines a light on a tightly bounded settlement on the outskirts of Istanbul,made waves when the Artangel commissioning organisation first premiered it in London in 2005.
Telegraph critic Alastair Sooke wrote at the time: “Forty battered televisions, bristling with analogue knobs, have been placed before 40 shabby armchairs. On each screen, a resident of Küba, one of Istanbul's most downbeat districts, with a heavy Kurdish population talks fluently about everything from scavenging for bread in the garbage to the impossibility of stopping smoking and the terror with which local psychopaths rule the roost.”
The piece certainly feels prescient twenty years later. Questions of migration, urban transformation, displacement and belonging have become ever more pressing, says a gallery statement, while “debates surrounding who has the authority to represent communities remain central to contemporary culture”.
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