Article Number: 3240
Hard Cover, German, 182 Pages, 2005, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary
Kutluğ Ataman

Küba

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Features interviews with forty residents of the Istanbul shanty-town known as Kuba. Not located on any official map, this locale is home to impoverished Turks and Kurds, religious fundamentalists, political dissidents and other disparate individuals who are bound in solidarity by their outsider status.

Kutlug Ataman's work is poised on the boundary between documentary and fiction. It uses storytelling to explore the fragility of a person's identity. His subjects are individuals who have become dislocated from conventional social categories, and feel compelled to reinvent themselves. In the 40-channel video installation Küba, Ataman creates a portrait of a town through interviews with 40 inhabitants of the squatter's camp on the outskirts of Istanbul. Unincorporated by the city or state government and barely policed by its authorities, Kba is a place where thieves, prostitutes, murderers, transvestites, and revolutionaries live by their own rules of cooperation and tolerance.