SAHA provides support for Erkan Özgen’s project Harese for HDTS 2022: The Searchers, held on 9 April – 22 May 2022. Guest curated by Iwona Blazwick, this event marks twenty years since the first HDTS event was organized in 2002 by founders Andrea Zittel, Lisa Anne Auerbach, Shaun Caley Regen, Andy Stillpass and John Connelly. HDTS 2022 emerges from a heavy felt shift in both culture-at-large and our local desert communities. Its title The Searchers shines a light on the “regenerative ruin,” a concept that follows 21st-century human intervention in our desert region.

About Erkan Özgen

Born and raised in the Derik district in Mardin, Turkey, Erkan Özgen (1971) graduated from the Fine Arts Education Painting Department in Çukurova University, Adana in 2000. The artist’s video and photography-based installations examine issues concerning migration, cultural identity, language, conscience and ethics, among others. Özgen’s works explore the contemporary conjuncture where various forms of displacement are redefining our political and social ecosystem.