Irmak Dönmez (b.1987, Istanbul) graduated Işık University, Visual Arts (grant), Işık University, MFA, Painting (grant), she started studying at Işık University, ph.D in Science of Art (grant). She continued her thesis research and artistic creations as a ph.D visiting researcher at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts for a year, during this time she opened her first solo show “My Thoughts are Breaking My Hair” in Copenhagen.
In 2018, she worked in an art residence (as an intern) in Iceland for six months. Upon her return, she started teaching the Drawing course at Işık University, where she graduated. Her work has been exhibited in Kunsthalle Mannheim’s “Mother” (2021) exhibition, which included many important artists such as Cindy Sherman, Picasso, Henry Moore, Magritte, Schiele, and her sculpture added to the permanent collection of the museum.
Lacan’s words “I see only from one point, but in my existence I am looked at from all sides” are behind Irmak Dönmez’s take on how the dominated female body loses itself-being and is compelled to assume new meanings, which leads to a visual reimagining of the body with a naive eye, guided by phenomenological questions. In doing so, the artist nearly operates on the body, cutting it into pieces and studying them semantically. Her chief concerns are the values of sanctity, motherhood, enclosing, harnessing, and nurturing attributed to the female body. The breast is central to the artist’s work as both the provider of our primal nutrient, and an object of pleasure. This makes an erogenous zone of the female body –in reference to Heidegger’s ‘Das Gestell’– a packaged, framed and marketed “product” ready to be sold.
Dönmez studies how the breast, as an image that spans the entire adult life in diferent representations, is conjoined with commodity fetishism as a sexual object that is independent of its subjectivity.
EDUCATION
2019 – : Lecturer & Drawing Instructor – Işık University: Drawing (for BA:, Visual Communication Design, for MA: Visual Arts) – Beykent University: Concepts of the Art (for BA: Visual Communication Design)
2018 (July-December) : Fish Factory Creative Center, Internship (Art Residency Managing), Stöðvarfjörður, Iceland
2017 – 2018 : The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Visual Arts, Ph.D. Visiting Teacher/Researcher (Supervisor: Prof. Angela Melitopoulos)
2016 – : Isik University Graduate School of Social Sciences, Ph.D. in Art Theory (Grant)
(Started searching about Oedip / Anti-Oedip on Contemporary Art)
2015 – 2017: Worked as a Research Assistant at Isik University, Visual Arts
2011 – 2014: Isik University, MFA, Painting. Thesis: Freudian Dream Theory and Surrealists (Grant)
2007 – 2011 : Isik University, Faculty of Fine Arts; BA, Visual Arts /Painting (Grant- Graduated with degree)
2001 – 2005 : Mimar Sinan High School of Fine Arts; Painting (Grant) Academic Publications:
2020: Creative Idea Through the Frame of Freudian Theory, Aydın University, Art & Design Symposium, Istanbul
ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS
2020: Creative Idea Through the Frame of Freudian Theory, Aydın University, Art & Design Symposium, Istanbul
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
“My Thoughts Are Breaking My Hair”, Gallery Q, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2018
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2021: Kunsthalle Mannheim, “Mother” https://www.kuma.art/en/mother
2021: Mixer Sessions V, İstanbul
2020: Mamut Art Project, İstanbul https://www.mamutartproject.com/portfolio_page/irmak-donmez/ 2019: Invisible Cities, Endecameron 2019, Castello di Rocca Sinibalda, Rome 2019: The Function of Progress, Autonomous Art Machines, Nesin Mathematics Village, Izmir
2018: Rundgang, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Visual Arts, Copenhagen
2015: Tuyap Art Fair, Amarcord, Istanbul
2014: “On Screen Project” Saatchi, London
2013: Clinic of Art- Bipolar, Mine Sanat, Istanbul
2012: Art Colony of Galicnik, Macedonian National Museum, Skopje 2012: “Form Fatale”, Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts, Salzburg
2011: Art Beat, Myra Galleries, Lütfü Kırdar Convention & Exhibition Centre, İstanbul
2010: 5. International Student Trienal (Selected Work : Lacrimosa), İstanbul 2009: “Ustalar ve Çıraklar”, Nişantaşı Gallery Isik, İstanbul
AWARDS
Pera Rotary Club, “Prix d’Excellence de Vocation Professionelle” 2016-2017