Elif Öner (b. 1980, Istanbul, Turkey) currently lives and works in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Dichotomies like reality/fiction and nature/culture are major concepts in Öner’s artwork and research towards their visual language. Focusing on the themes of self-perception and unwritten history, Öner uses the potential of the unconscious to research the unspoken in her artworks. Since 2018, Öner has been working as a duo with Evrim Kavcar, collaborating on an open ended artwork called Sensitive Sounds, tracing the subjective, social and cultural layers of sound. Her solo/duo and group exhibitions include So Moving, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel (2023); 17th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey (2022); The Fine Knife We Used To Pare Away The Rough Day, Kasa Galeri, Istanbul, Turkey (2020); Out of Frame, TAB Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey (2018); Dictionary of Sensitive Sounds, PASAJist, Istanbul, Turkey (2019); You Already Know Half Of The Story, artSümer, Istanbul, Turkey (2013); Historical Future Museum, website project, Netherlands, Turkey (2013-2014); MuseuMModern, website project, Turkey (2010-2014); Her selected group exhibitions include Sleep and Shadow, Siemens Art , Istanbul, Turkey (2011); Los Angeles- Istanbul Connection, Los Angeles, USA (2011); Museum Inside a Museum, Elgiz Museum, Istanbul, Turkey (2012); Upside Down: Hosting the Critique, Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, Serbia (2016) and I Haven’t Taken An Oath, Barın Han, Istanbul, Turkey (2022). Öner also worked as a video artist in a theater play Eurotopia directed by Emre Koyuncu and staged at Freiburg Government Theatre, Freiburg, Germany in 2017.
Evrim Kavcar (b. 1976, Istanbul, Turkey) is an artist academician, working in the sculpture department of Mardin Artuklu University, Turkey. Her practice makes use of tracings, moulds and casts, as well as interviews, visual and sound recordings while studying selected situations to explore layers of memory and forms of relating. Taking off from facts, her work arrives at a half-documentary approach where the gap between fact and fiction reveals what may have been overlooked. Since 2018, Kavcar has been working as a duo with Elif Öner, collaborating on an open ended artwork called Sensitive Sounds that traces the subjective, social and cultural layers of sound through multiple forms. She was the recipient of an Istanbul – Berlin stipendium at nGbk Berlin for six months in 2018. Her selected exhibitions include the 3rd Mardin Biennial, Mardin, Turkey (2015); Das In Void, Gallery Zilberman, Istanbul, Turkey (2015); SiS Collective, Apartment Project, Berlin, Germany (2016); Hidden in Loss, Karşı Sanat Çalışmaları, Istanbul, Turkey (2016); Dictionary of Sensitive Sounds, PASAJ, Istanbul, Turkey (2019); The Fine Knife We Used to Pare Away the Rough Day, Kasa Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey (2020); Shifting Patterns, Kunstverein Tiergarten, Berlin, Germany (2021); 8th International Sinop Biennial, Sinop, Turkey (2022); I Haven’t Taken an Oath, Barın Han, Istanbul, Turkey (2022), Sympathetic System, Karsi Sanat, Istanbul, Turkey (2022), Rounded by Sleep, ARTER, Istanbul, Turkey (2022), 17th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey (2022) So Moving, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel (2023).
Elif Öner & Evrim Kavcar