Manifesta purposely strives to keep its distance from what are often seen as the dominant centres of artistic production, instead seeking fresh and fertile terrain for the mapping of a new cultural topography.
Gülbin Ünlü, TR
Friend (working title), 2026 © Gülbin Ünlü. Photo © Manifesta 16 Ruhr / Ivan Erofeev.
Gülbin Ünlü's practice is based on painting and combines archival work, material and space. She works with references, patterns and cultural fragments and translates them into feeling archives that negotiate emotion, body knowledge as well as memory, power relations and collective narratives. In mash-up processes of layering, sampling and displacement, her work is created as painting, installation, performative situations, video and sound. Transitions, borderlands and resonance form the core of the content: thresholds at which belonging, invisibility and lost futures become readable anew. Material is an integral part of her artistic process and aims at a shift of perception.