Sarp Kerem Yavuz

Biography

Sarp Kerem Yavuz is a French-Turkish visual artist born in Paris in 1991 to a Turkish family in exile and raised in Istanbul. Working across photography, video, light projection, and neon, Yavuz creates richly staged, often provocative imagery that examines the intersections of gender, politics, religion, and violence within Ottoman and Turkish cultural history. He studied at Oberlin College before developing a signature visual language that blends classical Orientalist painting traditions with contemporary photographic and digital techniques, frequently restaging historical tropes to critique and reclaim narratives around queerness and masculinity in the Islamic world. In 2013, Yavuz became the youngest artist to exhibit at Istanbul Modern, and in 2016 he received the Palm Springs Photo Festival's Emerging Photographer Award for his acclaimed Masallah series. His work has continued to evolve technologically, and in recent years he has developed a hybrid analog-and-AI photographic process, merging traditional darkroom techniques such as Polaroid transfers with generative image-making tools. Yavuz's exhibitions include presentations at institutions and galleries such as High Line Nine, the Von Lintel Gallery, and Trotter&Sholer, and his work has been the subject of features by Artnet News, the Observer, and e-flux. Beyond his studio practice, Yavuz serves as Artistic Director for the Contemporary Istanbul Foundation and writes as a columnist for The Art Newspaper, positioning him as both a practicing artist and an influential voice in critical discourse around digital and contemporary art. Through his layered, often theatrical images, Yavuz continues to interrogate questions of desire, power, and cultural memory, carving out a distinctive space at the crossroads of historical painting, photography, and emerging technology.