In her collective and individual artistic practice spanning diverse media defined by her research, İz Öztat explores the persistence of violent histories through forms, materials, space and language. She responds to absences in official historiography through spectral, intergenerational and speculative fictions. İz Öztat fabricates the (auto)biography of Zişan (1894-1970), who appears to her as a historical figure, a ghost, and an alter ego. She takes on Zişan’s archives and interprets them through her practice to construct a complex temporality of action that enables the suppressed past to intervene in the increasingly authoritarian present. The values and methodologies driving her practice have been articulated in relation to struggles against the taming of running waters for profit and progress, queer desire and consensual negotiation of power.
Selected exhibitions include I am Nobody. Are You Nobody Too?, Meşher, Istanbul, 2022; The Colony, Schwules Museum, Berlin, 2018; Tamawuj, Sharjah Biennial 13, 2017; Land Without Land, Heidelberger Kunstverein, 2016; Salt Water: A Theory on Thought Forms, 14th Istanbul Biennial, 2015; Second Exhibition, Arter, Istanbul, 2010. Her academic articles, essays and fictional texts have been published in various media. Öztat participated in artist residency programs in Amman, Berlin, London, Istanbul, Madrid, Mexico City, Oslo, Paris and Yerevan. İz Öztat lives and works in Istanbul and Berlin.