Works exhibited by Queer Art Space Vienna
Do you think that artists nowadays are connected to the city they live in? You are based in Koln; how do you integrate your activity as an artist into the environment around you?
Corç George Demir: I think artists and their works have always been connected to and influenced by the environments and circumstances they live in. Cologne, and now Vienna, shape my artistic expression as metropolitan urban cities through their historical becoming, multitudes of cultures, lifestyles and resources. My art is a reflection of my experiences within each environment and my situation of life within it, projecting it back into it.
Art, besides being a representation of a subject, is a statement beyond all social, political and cultural barriers. Can art manage to have a social responsibility towards the surrounding reality? Are you able to address this responsibility in your work?
CGD: Art always has a social and ethical responsibility towards the surrounding reality. It’s a question of consciously accepting it. I make that socio-political responsibility the basis of my artistic practice by speaking through my own experiences, deconstructing and critiquing dominant powers.
How important is the past for imagining the future?
CGD: The past offers us with orientation, to make sense of the present and enable a projection into a possible future.
Why did you decide to pursue an artist career?
CGD: I did not choose an artistic career, I rather stumbled into it and carved out a space for my visual and theoretical expressions.
Which would you choose as the most iconic work of your production to represent yourself?
CGD: “Keeping up with Corç, George, Corç/George?” from 2019 best describes represents myself. It was the very first piece that I consciously let my personal experiences, memories and histories into my artistic practice, positioning these into a broader socio-political discourse and I couldn’t look back since.
Interview by Emanuela Mazzonis