Bennu Gerede — Biography



 

 After graduating from Parson's Paris with a BFA in photography, Bennu Gerede began her professional career in Istanbul as a fashion and portrait photographer. She has been working for several years on a book of interesting faces (artists, writers. actors, etc.), a work in progress which has yet to be published. She has recently had her first solo exhibition “Subjection”at the Galerist in Istanbul. This remarkable young artist’s greatest achievements are her three beautiful boys, her participation in numerous photo exhibitions all over the world, and her roles in feature films for which she has won a best actress award. Her latest news is that you can catch her in Hussein Chalayan's Place to Passage and Anaesthetics art films.

SUBJECTION April 8th> May 12th

An aesthetic approach to address an essential issue
Turkish photographer Bennu Gerede presents her hard-hitting exhibition, SUBJECTION, at the Nikki Marquardt Gallery in Paris, April 8-22.
With a tongue-in-cheek approach, Gerede’s images draw on the recognisable attributes of fashion photography to expose and condemn the oppression of women, downtrodden and abused by archaic traditions and beliefs. These effective images are a powerful reminder that in some parts of the world women are still sold into matrimony, adultery is punishable by death and young girls are denied an education and used as child labour in fields and factories.

The modern touch of glossy imagery Gerede brings to her disturbingly dramatic compositions highlights all the more strongly this clash of cultures and generations, as does the participation of an interesting collection of Turkish women (actors, models, designers, belly dancers...), each one specifically chosen by the artist to represent the feudal roles occupied by women within the traditions she denounces.
The exhibition takes us through the different stages of these women’s lives, ensconced as they are in their role as inanimate object, second class being and spectator of their own existence.

http://expomarquardtgerede.monsite.wanadoo.fr