Elif Yöney
My work explores the idea of the outsider, someone who does not fit in to a culture completely. They are not ostracized due to race, religion or looks, but because they inherently belong to another society. The narratives created in my work capture a shifting sense of identity, the state of “otherness”, and the anxiety produced by physiological displacement.
My starting point is the medium of photography. However, the medium I am working with can change throughout the process, depending on which medium is able to communicate and address the central theme most effectively.
I have worked in the art video, installation art, and book formats in the past.
I am drawn to questioning the construction of identity and nationality. In my work, I create a psychological space where the viewer questions my motives. Am I being conditioned by the sense of the collective? Am I an individual? Or am I an individual who is also an essential part of the collective? As an outsider to my native but complex culture, I use my artwork to question ‘the traditional.’ What was normal once becomes absurd when placed out of context and seen through foreign eyes.
Elif Yoney is a Photographer and Professor of Transmedia at the College of Visual and Performing Arts, Syracuse University.
