Songül Boyraz

cHURCH OF MONIKA: Songül Boyraz | Press Release | Facebook Event | Artist Website | What is the cHURCH?

September 11, 2016
11:00am

This September, artist Songül Boyraz will host the cHURCH OF MONIKA and discuss her recent project Game Over.

In Yenibosna, a district in Boyraz’s hometown of Istanbul, the artist has observed the Syrian and Kurdish refugee children who play within an abandoned dilapidated vacant lot. Game Over explores the home that children have created within the midst of desolation. In this child-made utopia, wooden planks become a floor, grass and fig leaves a soft carpet. Salvaged chairs and car tires are converted into furniture through several hours of design, allowing the children to create some semblance of normalcy and positivity. Bread from a nearby factory transforms a barren, makeshift table into a banquet upon where the children eat together. Here, in a self-made paradise, the children spend the day playing and laughing. In Game Over, Boyraz focuses on this oasis for children amid the suffering and poverty.

Songül Boyraz, an artist born in Turkey, currently lives and works in Austria. She completed her MFA at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria. She has participated in residencies at the MAK Center Artists- and Architects-In-Residence Program (Los Angeles, CA) and the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) (Brooklyn, NY). Her work has been presented in exhibitions in spaces such as Kund Gallery (Turkey), Gallery Viertlneun (Austria), Galerie Konzett (Austria), Royal Botanic Garden (Scotland), Museum of Contemporary Art (Croatia), ISCP (USA) and Haus der Kunst (Switzerland) among many others.