A graduate of ÉSAVL (2015), Mikail Koçak is the winner of the Prix Georges Collignon 2019 and the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles young sculpture awards in 2023 (small and large format). Inspired by the cultural universe of his childhood, his return trips to Turkey (the land of his ancestors) and urban cultures in particular, his work is multidisciplinary (installation, video, graphics, sculpture, photography, painting, performance). If her research sometimes takes the form of an intimate documentary (videos and images of her grandparents farming in the mountains of northeast Turkey), it is to create spaces for encounters.

Minör Depresyon, 2024

The Minör Depresyon installation overlaps “bread-and-butter” job, in the sense of “earning a crust” (an intentional play on words) and in an absolutely literal sense, with the iconography of kebab shops, often professional refuges for young men from Turkish immigrant backgrounds (1st, 2nd and 3rd generation).

He then mixes this first significant rapprochement with a third shift in meaning with the intrusion into a sterile “white cube” space of these few visual elements: the neon sign, the brooch, the television. The whole, deliberately minimal to match a codification of Art, its representations and its market, distills an impression of vacuity, latent apathy, weary digestion and visual wandering.

Assyociation Koopératif, 2024

See you at the café social.

Assyociation Koopératif is neither here nor there. It’s not at home, it’s not in the living room, it’s not in the country. The tea is strong and hot and sweet. Let’s play a game of cards. Hear from the youngest, get some old wrinkles and lose at cards. Accuse your neighbor of cheating at cards. Debate with animation. Lose again at cards. Leave the table in a huff. Blow your nose and play a game of console. Win at console. It’s so good to live at Kooperatif.