In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Republic of Turkey, Ardan Özmenoğlu, a worldwide contemporary artist, held a five-day workshop at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Design and Architecture. The first of this impressive series is a 10×1.5 m photograph of Ataturk, created using post-it notes. Although this mosaic-style work appears as a colorful whole from a distance, up close it becomes an art piece with various meanings. The portrait, named “The Greatest Holiday,” is on temporary display in the İİSBF building and will later be hosted by the FF. Another product of the workshop was created by transferring portraits of Atatürk, showing his smile and charismatic well-being, onto 50×70 cm sized papers using the silk printing technique. The work, a combination of 18 separate portraits, is exhibited in the FC building.
Ardan Özmenoğlu received her BA and MFA from Bilkent University, Faculty of Fine Arts, Design and Architecture. Her works mainly consist of site-specific installations, paintings and transparent glass sculptures that she creates using original screen-printing techniques on different material surfaces. Özmenoğlu’s artworks can be found in important collections internationally, such as the Hort Collection NYC, Naked Heart Foundation, the Frankfurt Airport Collection, the Osthaus Museum Hagen Collection, the Kala Art Institute Collection, the Borusan Contemporary Art Collection, the UniCredit Bank Art collection, the Fondation Jan Michalski Collection, the Imoga Mundi (Benetton) Collection and the Istanbul Modern Museum Collection.