Asena’s practice is based in photography, sculpture, painting, and textile, and invested in establishing cross-disciplinary connections. Through the translation of similar ideas across mediums, he is interested in the nuances that emerge through the materiality of each artistic form. His work explores the abstraction that occurs in these moments of translation as generative opportunities to complicate notions of identity, social-cultural experiences, and ways of being more broadly. Abstraction allows for a meditative orientation to the interior landscapes of emotions, desires, vulnerabilities, and contradictions we each possess.
Throughout his practice, Asena positions queerness as aspirational ways of being. That is, moving beyond normative structures, not only in regard to gender and sexuality, but interrogating capitalist and colonial systems that stifle notions of relationality. Queerness is ever-shifting and is generative precisely because it can never be fully known. He investigates the ways the material realities of queer people are distorted in attempts to construct queerness as a threat to society under various global governmental regimes. Queer is often taken up as an opposition to “traditional” ideals and morals.
Asena engages a visual language that attends to the concept of secretive eroticism, which he uses as a meditation on tactics often employed by queer people as a mode of survival amidst social and cultural violence. This is both a space to reflect on his own experiences as a queer Muslim and expand perspectives through work with collaborators. Asena claims illegibility and opacity as critical stances in his work, affirming the refusal to be read and categorized.
EDUCATION
2021 – MFA, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) (Chicago, USA)
2017 – CE, International Center of Photography (ICP) (New York, USA)
• Rita K. Hillman Award
2015 – BBA, Parsons the New School for Design (New York, USA)
• Strategic Design and Management
RESIDENCIES
2025 – Cité des Arts Internationale Paris upcoming
2024 – Baxter Street Artist Residency NYC ongoing
2024 – Praxis Digital Weaving Lab Residency
2022/2024 – Resident at POUSH Paris France
2022 – Ankara Queer Art Program Ankara Turkey
2022 – Praxis Digital Weaving Lab Residency Cleveland USA
EXHIBITIONS
Solo Show
2025 – Baxter Street Artist Residency CCNY upcoming
2023 – KA Atolye Forging Possibilities in Chaos Ankara Turkey
Group Show
2024 – Resilience 229 Lab Paris upcoming
2024 – July Fourth Galerie Chloé Salgado Paris
2024 – Through The Window Project
2024 – The Hunter of Thyself The Versus Art Project Istanbul Turkey
2023 – Devenir Feuillage LRRH Düsseldorf Germany
2023 – Contemporary Istanbul KA Atolye
2023 – Paths of Flow 12 743 KM Istanbul
2023 – Duwoshow Interlaced/Entrelacés POUSH Paris France
2023 – MENART Fair Dumonteil Contemporary Paris France
2023 – Contemporary Istanbul Bloom KA Atolye
2023 – Paris Dance Project Time to Empty Bladder 7 performances at Philharmonie POUSH and Hangar Y
2023 – Sanatorium Between and Betwixt Istanbul Turkey
2022 – Context 2022 Filter Photo Gallery
2022 – Fiber Art International 2022 Pittsburgh USA
2021 – Porous Modes Field Projects online exhibition
2021 – Carlyle Hotel Permanent Collection New York
2021 – Out of Place Out of Bound Artworks Center for Contemporary Art Loveland CO
2021 – Out of Place Billboard Public Exhibition Chicago
2021 – Audience to My Unknown SAIC Grad Show Chicago IL
2021 – ArtMenu Online Exhibition London UK
Publications
2021 – Primal Sight Brooklyn NY Gnomic Books
2021 – Photo Grad Catalogue SAIC Chicago IL
2016 – Amanda Verita Publishing Istanbul Turkey