Barış Doğrusöz
Barış Doğrusöz was born in Istanbul and lives between Beirut and Istanbul. His practice spans video installation, film, sculpture, and installation, drawing on research into the cultural histories of the MENA and Turkey region through techno-political investigations and speculative scenarios. He holds a BA in Visual Arts and an MFA from HEAR, France, and attended the Home Workspace Program at Ashkal Alwan (2015–16) and the March Project at the Sharjah Art Foundation (2018). His work has been shown at ARTER, Istanbul (2019), Carré d’Art, Nîmes (2018), the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2016), and the Sharjah Biennial 13 (2017).
CORONA PROJECT MISSIONS—1968 AND 1974
2020
digital assemblage, black-and-white digital print
Cross-Pollinated takes the meaning of the settlement of Dura-Europos in Syria as a lens through which to look at conflicting histories and presents in the region. Dura-Europos is an important archeological site that sits on the borders of multiple ancient and modern imperial projects. As a multicultural garrison town, it contained people of many faiths, languages, origins and purposes within its walls, until it was abandoned and left to the desert sands. Rediscovered in the 20th century, Dura-Europos has proved a new testing ground for competing contemporary ideologies. Using saturated color over archival images from the Cold-War Corona space telescope and aerial photographs, Doğrusöz creates overlapping narratives that seek to build relations across time and with the ancient inhabitants, while documenting how the site has been constantly repurposed by successive empires. The work seems to offer, however temporarily, a way of locating the Middle Eastern Europe .
CROSS-POLLINATED
2021
3-channel video installation, 8′34″