Çakar's installation New Rarities was developed during two artist residencies in St Ives in 2024, during which she became interested in representations of seashells, imagining them as both homes and graves. This led to an exploration of the shifting cultural value of natural resources – including Tyrian purple and Cornish tin – and the exploitation of landscapes and people through their extraction.
Hear artist Cansu Çakar in conversation with Anne Barlow, Director, Tate St Ives on the opening day of her installation at Tate St Ives.
New Rarities is commissioned by Tate St Ives, curated by Anne Barlow, Director, Tate St Ives. Supported by SAHA.
Cansu Çakar
Cansu Çakar (b. 1988, İstanbul, Turkey) is based in İzmir. Her projects and exhibitions include NATURE AND STATE, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden (Baden-Baden, 2022), Fore-Edge Painting, MACRO Museo d'Arte Contemporanea di Roma and Bibliotheca Hertziana (Rome, 2021), The 6th Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, The Optical and Mechanical Plant (Yekaterinburg, 2021), BB 11-11th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art: The Crack Begins Within, KW (Berlin, 2020), Miniature 2.0, Pera Museum (Istanbul, 2020), Replica of the Origin, SALT Beyoğlu (Istanbul, 2019), and Linear Transcendency at the Lab - Darat al Funun (Amman, 2016). She also participated in SALT WATER: A Theory of Thought Forms, the 14th Istanbul Biennial - 100°-FLO (Istanbul, 2015).
Anne Barlow
Anne Barlow is Director of Tate St Ives where she oversees its programme of exhibitions, displays, artist residencies, new commissions, learning and research. Barlow was formerly Director of Art in General, New York, and held curatorial roles at the New Museum, New York and Glasgow Museums, Scotland. Across these roles, she has organised numerous exhibitions and published and lectured widely. She was also Curator of 5th Bucharest Biennale, Co-Curator of the Latvian Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, and recently curated the Samdani Art Award at the 2023 Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh.