AHMET ÖĞÜT

Ahmet Öğüt works across sculpture, installation, video, photography, drawing and socially engaged projects to investigate the social and political infrastructures that organise everyday life. Underlying this diverse body of work is a sustained interest in knowledge as something collectively produced rather than institutionally authored. Working from an expanded understanding of art as a social infrastructure rather than simply the production of objects, his projects emerge through encounters, collaborations and carefully constructed situations that redirect institutional scripts, habits and systems of exchange.

Humor, irony and fiction occupy an important place in his practice as methods for exposing the contradictions embedded within bureaucracies, labour extraction and cultural production. He often treats institutions not simply as objects of critique but as media, inhabiting and redirecting their protocols, inventing parallel procedures, or inserting slight deviations into their functioning.

Öğüt’s practice reveals how power operates through ordinary situations, rendering visible the assumptions embedded within them while opening spaces for alternative forms of imagination and solidarity. Across this practice, artistic production becomes inseparable from pedagogy, collective organisation and the invention of new social infrastructures. Art functions less as a space of representation than as a means of rehearsing different ways of inhabiting institutions, sharing knowledge and acting together.

Ahmet Öğüt (Silvan, Diyarbakir, 1981) lives and works between Amsterdam and Istanbul. He completed his BA from the Fine Arts Faculty at Hacettepe University, Ankara, his MA from the Art and Design Faculty at Yıldız Teknik University, Istanbul. 

He has exhibited widely, more recently with solo exhibitions in institutions including Saved by the Whale's Tail, Art on the Underground & New Contemporaries (London, 2025); Labour after Pay, Love before Work, State of Concept (Athens, 2023); Jump up!, MoCA Skopje (Skopje, 2022); Bakunin's Barricade, Kunstverein Dresden (Dresden, 2018); Ahmet Öğüt, Kunsthal Charlottenborg (Copenhagen, 2017); Forward! Vooruit!, Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven, 2015); Happy Together: Collaborators Collaborating Chisenhale Gallery (London, 2015); Exploded City / MATRIX 231,Berkeley Art Museum (2010, Berkeley); and Mutual Issues, Inventive Acts, Kunsthalle Basel (Basel, 2008). He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions including; The Sky Was Candy, Arter (Istanbul, 2026); Global Positioning System, Hayy Jameel (Jeddah, 2026); Pure Intentio, Singapore Biennale (Singapore, 2025); Sense of Safety, Yermilov Centre Kharkiv (Kharkiv, 2024); Dhaka Art Summit (Dhaka, 2023); 17th Istanbul Biennial, (Istanbul, 2022); FRONT International 2022, Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, (Ohio, 2022); Asia Society Triennial: We Do Not Dream Alone (New York, 2021); In the Presence of Absence, Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, 2020); Zero Gravity at Nam SeMA, Seoul Museum of Art (Seoul, 2019); Echigo Tsumari Art riennale (Niigata, 2018); the British Art Show 8 (Leeds, 2015 & Edinburgh, 2017); La Vie Moderne, 13th Biennale de Lyon (Lyon, 2015); Performa 13 (New York, 2013), the Fifth Biennial of Visual Art Performance, (New York, 2013); The Unexpected Guest, 7th Liverpool Biennial (Liverpool, 2012); Untitled, 12th Istanbul Biennial (Istanbul, 2011); Younger Than Jesus, the New Museum Triennial, (New York, 2009); and the When Things Cast No Shadow, 5th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art (Berlin, 2008). Öğüt was awarded the Visible Award for the Silent University (2013); the special prize of the Future Generation Art Prize, Pinchuk Art Centre, Ukraine (2012); the De Volkskrant Beeldende Kunst Prijs 2011, Netherlands; and the Kunstpreis Europas Zukunft, Museum of Contemporary Art, Germany (2010). He co-represented Turkey at the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009). His works are part of institutional collections such as the Guggenheim Museum New York; Kadist, San Francisco, US - Paris; Rennie Collection, Vancouver; Sammlung Goetz, Munich; Frans Hals Museum; FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais, Dunkerque; Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis; KIASMA Museum of Contemporary Art, Hesinki; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Fondazione Giuliani, Rome; MSU Broad Art Museum, East Lansing; Vehbi Koç Foundation, Istanbul.