Özlem Altın (*1977 in Goch) is the recipient of the State of Berlin’s Hannah Höch Förderpreis 2024. In her artistic work, Özlem Altın prefers not to be associated with any particular art medium. At the Berlinische Galerie, she has engaged in a dynamic process of collaging and photomontage to create a multifaceted, site-specific installation, in which she examines – with a strong measure of empathy – the relational fabric between photography, archive, and body.
The exhibition invites visitors to engage with the cycles of life—as a metaphor for process and change or as a reflection of the constantly evolving clockwork of the cosmos. For Özlem Altın, the body is a means of expression and a repository of knowledge at the very same time, or, as she puts it, an ‘interface for communicating, connecting, and transmitting knowledge through touch and contact’. For her multilayered installations, comprised of works ranging from large-format paintings to room-sized sculptural constellations, Özlem Altın draws on her own and found photographs from the archive she has been accruing for over two decades, with a focus on body language, gestures, and touch. Here, photography becomes an artistic material, as well as the point of departure and reference for her creative practice, for instance when she arranges pictures of hands or eyes together with other image fragments, thus creating, also through overpainting and cropping, an imaginary world of new sensory connections, calling to mind a speculative way of mapping. Here, the artist’s compositions of inner and outer pictures elude any form of clear interpretation, making ambivalence visually tangible.
- All the explanatory exhibition texts are available in German and English.
- There is no information in Simple German.
- There is no information in German Sign Language.
- There is step-free access to the exhibition.
- Most of the exhibits and explanatory texts can be seen and read from a seated position.
- There is no seating. Wheelchairs and folding stools can be borrowed free of charge from the cloakroom.
- To protect the works in the exhibition limited use is made of bright illumination. Most of the exhibition texts are designed with strong contrast.
- All the panel texts are available as a large-print brochure that you will find at the entrance to the exhibition.
- The exhibition contains no tactile floor guidance and no touch models.
Do you have any other questions about accessibility? Andreas Krüger, officer accessibility and inclusion, will be happy to answer them via e-mail krueger@berlinischegalerie.de or via phone +49 (0)30-789 02-832.
Exhibition film
Trailer
About the artist
Özlem Altın is an artist, mother, and somatic practitioner. In her paintings, collages, photographs, and artist books she explores the body at rest and the inanimate in action. In her work, Altın draws from a photographic collection she has assembled over the years, combining found images with her own photographs to form dense constellations. Employing photomontage and applying layers of paint, the artist succeeds in fostering new associations. In this way, the artist challenges viewers to also examine the space between the images and to develop their own narratives. Some elements and motifs—like the mask, the mermaid, the heron—are symbols to which she frequently returns. Her collages embody something hybrid, part human, part animal, as well as a state of in-betweenness. This complex net of imagery contributes to the elaboration of a narrative on bodily existence, at times of mythological nature.
Hannah Höch Förderpreis
Since 2011, the Hannah Höch Förderpreis has been bestowed on artists by the State of Berlin. The award, which includes a stipend of 10,000 euros as well as an exhibition with accompanying publication, recognizes the lifework to date of an artist (or an established group of artists) who lives and works in Berlin. The award is meant to support the implementation of new ideas and to enhance public visibility.
