The Lisbon/London-based Turkish artist Özge Topçu is exhibiting her newest installation Terranean for the first time at her studio in Lisbon.
Born in 1987 in Kırklareli, Özge Topçu has had a meteoric career since graduating from Yıldız Technical University and the painting department of the Fine Arts Institute at Marmara University, exhibiting her distinctive, graphic installations in Gemany, California and the Netherlands as well as at Artnight London 2018. That same year, she was shortlisted for the The MAC Belfast, Ulster Bank International Artist Award. She is currently 2019 Gulbenkian AIR 351 Grant artist in residence in Lisbon. Her last show, Flat Earth\ W axis, was at the Pilot Gallery.
Terranean is inspired by Mediterranean chimneys and pots and dishes made from terracotta. The artist has created an alternative landscape setting terracotta objects she has found against the Lisbon skyline like pieces of architecture. She names her new utopic city ‘Terranean’, a neologism she created, literally “related to Terra (earth)”. Terra-cotta is ‘baked earth’, which has a certain irony given the state of climate change and wildfires. And ‘Terra’ of goddess of earth.
Issue 66, December 2023
Turkey’s Centenary Issue
