Cihan Çakmak was born in Lower Saxony in 1993 and grew up in Worpswede and Bremen. After studying photography at the Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts, with an interim study visit to Lisbon, she enrolled at the Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts in 2017. There she studied in the class of Prof. Tina Bara and received her diploma in 2021. In 2023, she completed her master's degree, also at the HGB. In 2020, Cihan Çakmak received the Paula Modersohn Becker Young Talent Award, Worpswede, and in 2023 the ein-blicke Award at the blicke film festival, Bochum. In addition to exhibiting, she speaks in the form of artist talks on current topics and discourses.
Where I left you / My sister and I
2023
Two-channel 4K video installation, 14 min
3 photographs, 90x93cm, 70x100cm, 80x100cm
In her two-part work “Where I left you / My sister and I”, consisting of three photographs and a two-channel video installation, Cihan Çakmak poetically allows us to look deep into the dysfunctional family history associated with transgenerational traumas.
The work is permeated by actions and gestures. Triggered by a spectrum of emotions, Çakmak uses features of classical portrait photography, which she alludes to psychological processes with concrete signs and symbols in order to point to the historical context of the life course of children of Kurdish immigrants.
Always reproduced by two figures, the artist shows herself, with her sister, in the video through protagonists who go through various phases of emotions. Motifs of revenge, fear and war also flash through the call and sorrow.
