Ömer Ali Kazma

In the video series he has been producing since 2005 under the heading of Obstructions, Ali Kazma has carried out research into the tense equilibrium between order and chaos, and life and death, into the efforts of the human being to hold together a world inclined towards disintegration and destruction, and the diversity of physical production developed to achieve this, and what such production might mean in the context of human nature.

The Obstructions series was instigated by a 37-day performative work Ali Kazma realized for Istanbul Pedestrian Exhibitions II: Tünel-Karaköy, an exhibition co-curated for public space by Fulya Erdemci and Emre Baykal in 2005. In this work titled Today, Kazma had tracked down micro-level production and repair activities within the daily life of the neighbourhood where the exhibition took place. He first recorded and edited these activities with his camera during the day and later projected them onto a shop window facing Tünel Square in the evening on the same day. After the working hours ended and the time for rest arrived, the shift of Kazma’s work started, conveying the events of the day into the night throughout the exhibition period. Employing a small shift in time as its presentation strategy, this performative work articulated the artist’s own physical and mental labour as part of the daily routine of the neighbourhood and rendered visible in fragments all kinds of production, maintenance and repair activities that we often pass by without paying any attention –or do not see at all, because they are carried out indoors. Today brought, into its own field of research, the human body at work in the broadest sense of the word, the tools that function as the extensions of the body, the common gestures and acts of working bodies, and the grammar of its language formed via similarities between these gestures and acts.

Kazma's videos raise fundamental questions about the meaning and significance of human activity and labor and the meaning of economy, production, and social organisation. He has exhibited his work in the Istanbul Bienniall (2001, 2007, 2011), Tokyo Opera City (2001), Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Centre (Istanbul, 2004), Istanbul Modern (2004), 9th Havana Biennial (2006), San Francisco Art Institute (2006), Lyon Biennial (2007), Sao Paulo Biennial (2012) among others.

Ali Kazma was granted the 2001 UNESCO Award for the Promotion of the Arts and received the 2010 Nam June Paik Award given by North Rhine-Westphalia Art Foundation in the field of media art, with his “Obstructions” series that he had been working on since 2005.

Living and working in Istanbul as a video artist since 1998 and becoming internationally established from 2007, Ali Kazma creates sets of short films that are usually between ten and twelve minutes long. In his multi-video formats, Kazma creates archives of the human condition through his fascination with man and the nature of life and death. In presenting the audience with conflicting notions of human nature, as well as our spatial relationship with our body and our physical surroundings, we are shown the complexities within these topics. Kazma is represented by Galeri Nev Istanbul.

He was born in Istanbul , Turkey. He graduated from Robert College in 1989. After briefly studying photography in London, he returned to the US to study film. He received his MA from The New School in New York City where he worked as a teaching assistant. Kazma has been living in Istanbul since 2000.

Ali Kazma (born 1971) is a Turkish video artist, best known for his series documenting human activity, and labor that explores the meaning of production and social organisation.

Ali Kazma represented Turkey in the 55th International Art Exhibition, la Biennale di Venezia. Curated by Emre Baykal, the Pavilion of Turkey at the 55th Venice Biennial featured Ali Kazma’s video series Resistance.