UTS Gallery and Art Collection is delighted to announce a new commission by Cigdem Aydemir for the UTS Broadway Screen.
Cigdem Aydemir is a Sydney-based artist working in the mediums of installation, performance and video art. Her socially and politically engaged art practice considers the convergence of gender, religious and cultural identities, with an interest in post-colonial and feminist issues.
Much of Aydemir’s work expands upon the veil as a culturally constructed site and draws upon her lived experience to question established relations of power. Veils on Veils resembles a shampoo commercial yet one in which a woman (the artist) appears to be advertising headscarves made to approximate hairstyles.
With a camp and kitsch aesthetic, the work builds upon the legacy of drag performance to parody and provoke Western ideals of the feminine. In Veils on Veils, the artist playfully reframes the UTS Broadway Screen as an advertising billboard, blurring the line between art, commerce and entertainment.
Veils on Veils plays at daily intervals between other commissions on the UTS Broadway Screen from 19 October 2020.
The UTS Broadway Screen is a 12-metre long digital screen dedicated to screening digital art by Australian artists. The Broadway Screen in located in UTS Central, a vibrant student hub and faculty space at the heart of our city campus. The Broadway Screen commissions speak to the diversity of perspectives and experiences of the UTS community, and respond to the site as a busy city pedestrian corridor and as an entryway to a centre of knowledge exchange.
Cigdem Aydemir will speak alongside Broadway Screen commissioned artist Grant Stevens for an in-conversation panel event moderated by Stella Rosa McDonald on Thursday 29 October at 5pm. Registration is essential.
Cigdem is a fearless artist who uses satire and nostalgia as political tools. Cigdem’s commission for UTS builds upon her previous examinations of desire and the performance of the body. The UTS Broadway Screen is a platform for communication between the university and the world, and a site where UTS students can see themselves represented on screen, in all their multiplicity and complexity."
Cigdem’s work mixes different tropes to create thought provoking pieces to engage with topics like power and identity. She has employed the physical space as well as the digital medium in intelligent ways. At UTS, and at the Centre for Social Justice and Inclusion in particular, we encourage critical and creative thinking. We are proud to have this piece represented here.