Self-Portrait
Gulgun Kayim
Artist BioSelf-Portrait is an eight-character site-specific performance installation about memory and identity. Mining her own history as a Turkish Cypriot forced to immigrate to the United Kingdom due to violence at home, Gulgun Kayim draws on interviews with members of the Greek and Turkish Cypriot diaspora in creating this piece. Self-Portrait is the third in a series of installations by Kayim that are both explicitly formal in the way they respond to their locations and imbued with a deep sense of history, political currency and dislocation. Self-Portrait is presented along with Kayim’s two preceding works as a trilogy of site-specific performance installations.
Gulgun Kayim
Minneapolis, MN
Gulgun Kayim is an interdisciplinary theatre artist. She is a founder and co-artistic/managing director of Skewed Visions, a Minneapolis-based site-specific performance company. She has created several works for the group, including The House, The Orange Grove, The Car, The Eye in the Door, Part two: Breakfast of Champions and Untitled #1. Kayim’s funding credits include a 2004 Bush Foundation Artist Fellowship, two Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowships and a Jerome Foundation Travel Grant. In addition to her work with Skewed Visions, Kayim has collaborated for eight years with writer/producer Anne Basting. From 1993 to 2000, she coordinated the University of Minnesota’s Public Art on Campus Program and the Weisman Museum’s Jerome/Lilly Temporary Public Art Commission Program. She is an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Theatre Arts and Dance at the University of Minnesota.