Guler Ates works with video, photography, printmaking and performance. She graduated from the Royal College of Art with an MA in printmaking in 2008. At the heart of her work lies an exploration into the experience of cultural displacement, with manifestations of her work realised through performance and site-responsive activities that merge Eastern and Western sensibilities. Her work comments on the Western notion of Orientalism and the effects of the cross-pollination of cultures on female identity and architecture.
The architectural sites that Ates generally works within are of a particular era with specific links to colonialism, now post-colonialism, and ‘the East’. She conducts research into the history of these sites, informing the source of the fabric that becomes a costume or veil for the performing model(s). As part of the performance, the subject tells a story drawn from the history of the site, exploring the theme of Ates’ cultural duality.
Guler Ates has implemented projects at the following settings: the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Cité Internationale Des Arts, Paris; Leighton House Museum, London; Great Fosters (the former royal hunting lodge of King Henry VIII), Egham; Royal Academy of Arts, London; and City Palace, Udaipur.