Göksu Kunak

Göksu Kunak (b. 1985, Ankara) is a Berlin based artist, researcher, and writer whose practice moves between performance, moving image, drawing, and research. Working with chronopolitics and hybrid text forms, Kunak explores the languages of contemporary life, non Western dramaturgies, and the pressures of heteropatriarchal structures. Influenced by Arabesk culture and the lived realities of migration, they stage layered scenarios in which gesture, voice, and object become carriers of memory and resistance.

Göksu holds an M.A. in art history with the supervision of Assoc. Prof. Dr. Zeynep Yasa Yaman. They worked as a research and teaching assistant at the Art History Deparment of Hacettepe University. They've begun working on their Ph.D. on queer chronopolitics in relation to performance, blackbox (as a temporal implosion) with Prof. Dr. Bojana Kunst, but never finished.

Awards: Berlin Art Prize of the Akademie der Künste, 2025; nominee, Dieter Ruckhaberle Prize.

Performances and exhibitions include Performa Biennial, New York; Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin; Sophiensaele, Berlin; Kaaitheater, Brussels; De Singel, Antwerp; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva; Bergen Assembly.

Selected works and productions: Ajaib Mahluqat (Acayip Mahlukat), 2023; AN(A)KARA, 2021; solo shows Dhikr, Number1MainRoad, Berlin; Bygone Innocence, Pilevneli, Istanbul. Publications and writing include the book #225 I thought this would (Belladonna*, 2018).

Education: MA in Art History, Hacettepe University, Ankara; former research and teaching assistant, Hacettepe University.