Sukran Moral

Şükran Moral (born in 1962 In Terme, Samsun) is a Turkish artist, best known for her exhibitions with her performances, videos and installations. Also, during the 80's and 90's, she wrote poetry and worked as a journalist and art critic in Turkey. Şükran Moral currently lives and works in Istanbul and Rome.

Şükran Moral was born in 1962 in Terme, Samsun. She grew up in a conservative family with her 3 brothers and 1 sister. Her father didn't let her study after primary school, however, she went against to his decision of making her to go to work in a tailors shop and with the help of her mother, secretly, she started middle school. With a great will, she graduated from high school even though she was under difficult circumstances such as Domestic violence and Peer pressure.

Moral graduated from the Department of Fine Arts in the Faculty of Education at Ankara University. Then, in 1989, she moved to Italy and studied again in Academy of Fine Arts in Rome(Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma), where she graduated from the painting section in 1995.

Moral's area of interest have mostly been the restrain, pressure and the suppressive effect of religion on women, the themes concerning the mentally ill and disordered and the alienation and exclusion of the marginalized or unordinary; such as immigrants, Transsexuals, Prostitutes and else, those are living on the margins of the society and its values. Since 1994, Moral has had many solo exhibitions with her performances / videos and installations in the world. In 1997 she made a performance at the Museum of Contemporary Art Workshop Sapienza University of Rome, with the significant title "Museum & Morgue", where she transformed the museum into a morgue. Some other works of her have been performed at a women's asylum in Istanbul and in the men's section of a Turkish bath (Turkish "Hamam" which also gives its name to the work itself) in Galatasaray, Istanbul. The previously mentioned work of Moral, “Hamam”, which was also exhibited in 1997 as a part of International Istanbul Biennial, was and still is one of the most influential works on the contemporary artists of the world. "What's scandalous here is not the nudity," she says, "What's scandalous was the fact that here I was, an intellectual woman, who proposes doing something scandalous. If I had really been a whore, it would have been no big deal. Just being a female avant-garde artist is scandalous." For over 10 years, Moral is ranked among the most interesting contemporary artists on the international scene.

...
Wikipedia