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xurban_collective is an international art collective founded in 2000 by Guven Incirlioglu (Izmir) and Hakan Topal (New York) as a transatlantic collaboration. xurban_collective’s mission is to instigate the questioning, examination, and discussion of contemporary politics, theory, and ideology, utilizing documentary research and take the form of media projects, installations and texts. The collective focuses specifically on areas of regional conflicts, military spatial confinement, urban segregation, nationalist and neo-liberal exclusion strategies.

xurban_collective exhibited internationally including projects in institutions such as the 49th Venice Biennial, the 8th International Istanbul Biennial, PS1/MoMA, Apexart, Exitart and ZKM – Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin and Istanbul Modern. For more information; www.xurban.net

Güven İncirlioğlu studied architecture (B.Arch); photography (MFA) and art theory (Ph.D.) and has exhibited since the 1980s in group shows and has held one person exhibitions in New York, Ankara, Istanbul, Sarajevo, Sofia and other locations working mostly with photography, photo-mechanical materials and new media. Since 1990, he was a lecturer in art and design in various schools in Turkey, including Bilkent University, Ankara, and Istanbul Bilgi University and is currently a faculty member at Economy University’s Faculty of Art and Design in Izmir.

Hakan Topal is an artist living and working in New York. He is the principal of Newgray and the co-founder of xurban_collective. He studied engineering (BS), gender and women studies (MA) at the Middle East Technical University, Ankara and sociology(MA) at the New School For Social Research, New York. Topal has had one-person exhibitions, performances, video projects and photo-essays in addition to publishing works in various journals and catalogs.Topal worked as a researcher at GISAM, Audio Visual Research Center at METU, Ankara, and New Media Projects Manager at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York and as technical director at the Prospect New Orleans biennial. Most recently, he was the guest editor of ArteEast Quarterly Journal and finished a documentary film project on a major late 18th-century Austro-Bavarian sculptor, Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, commissioned by Neue Galerie New York


www.xurban.net