Hammer Contemporary Collection: Banu Cennetoğlu

The contents of Banu Cennetoğlu’s (b. 1970, Ankara, Turkey) sprawling, 127-hour video originate from still and moving images sourced from the artist’s mobile phones, computers, cameras, and external hard drives over a twelve-year period. The assembly of these images represents the entirety of Cennetoglu’s visual archive amassed between June 10, 2006—in the year before her daughter was born—and March 21, 2018, when the work was first exhibited. The 2006 date also marks the initiation of the artist’s ongoing work with The List, a collaboration with the Dutch organization UNITED for Intercultural Action, which records the names of refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants who have died attempting to enter Europe since 1993. In their totality, the images record the social history of the recent past through the lens of the artist’s experience of the world.

Hammer Contemporary Collection: Banu Cennetoğlu is organized by Aram Moshayedi, interim chief curator, with Nyah Ginwright, curatorial assistant.