Fatma Bucak's Art Addresses Environmental Destruction and Political Violence

Fatma Bucak, a Kurdish artist born in Iskenderun in 1984 and based between London and Istanbul, is a 2023-2024 fellow at the American Academy of Rome (Fondazione Sviluppo e Crescita CRT Italian Fellow in Visual Arts). Her work confronts environmental destruction in relation to political power and conflict, exploring themes of erased history and collective memory. In an interview, Bucak discussed her project 'We possess all things,' developed during her residency. The works include 'I Do Smell War' (2023), a drawing of a Rosa damascena she brought from Damascus to Europe in 2017; 'Black Ink' (2021-2022), a typographic print using ink made from ashes of burned books collected in 2016 in southeastern Turkey after an attack on a Kurdish publishing house; 'They Burned It All' (2022), a two-channel video with sound by Bahar Royaee featuring women searching ashes and a silent choir in Istanbul; and 'Sun of the Misdeeds and Consents and Cowardly Acts' (2022-2023), bronze sculptures of endangered Iraqi birds based on a Sumerian artifact looted from the Iraq Museum in Baghdad. The project title references a 1793 letter from Chinese Emperor Qianlong to King George III. Bucak's work often incorporates metaphor, sound, color, and participation, addressing political identity, gender, and endangered species. She studied philosophy at Istanbul University, printmaking at Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti in Turin, and photography at the Royal College of Art in London.