Mustafa Boğa

Mustafa Boga is a multidisciplinary artist based in the UK and Turkey. He completed his masters degree in 2016 from Central Saint Martins in London after studying for an MA in Fine Art. He achieved a bachelors degree from Istanbul University at the Faculty of Communication and Journalism. 

Mustafa has won several awards including The Red Mansion Art Prize, which took him to China, where he created a piece of work entitled ‘There He is Without a Proper Diagnosis’ relating to his different cultural experiences. In 2017, Mustafa has worked with international artists such as Otobong Nkanga and Irena Haiduk, and has performed in Documenta14 in Kassel, Germany. In 2018 he was awarded as ‘Highly Commended Artist’ at the Ashurt Emerging Artist Prize and got a fellowship at RAW Material Company in Dakar, Senegal. In 2019 he took part in a residency (ThirdBase) in Lisbon where he created a series of textile works called ‘The landscape of Perpetual Flags’. In 2021 he won Bilsart’s video art competition and had a solo show as well as his artworks become part of Odunpazarı Modern Museum in Eskişehir and he had a group show there in 2021. In 2022 He had solo exhibitions in Istanbul and London and several group exhibition overseas as well as He had an art residency in Sandness, Norway.

Boga’s works examine the differences between art and documentary and how contemporary multi-media manipulate our understanding of current affairs. He is interested in the boundaries that separate the viewing of events as a witness and his desire to tell stories. He has a background in journalism and film and have brought these skills into play in his fine art practice. His work is a way of narrating his background both emotionally and culturally, not just as portraying with images, but how they are reserved and recollected in his mind. They are inspired by family history, childhood memories and personal experiences. He works deals with issues such as gender, national identity, militarism, masculinity and sexuality. He works across a range of different media including them with textile, video, photography and installation.

About embroidery work:

During the lockdown, I started making freehand machine embroidery and tried to capture a vision for a post-pandemic future, along with a journey through his creative influences and history. When He starts to make each work with this medium, however, he makes plans and lays out all the yarn with color coordination, but in the end, improvisation leads him. The randomness of mistakes makes sense when the viewer looks at the work from a few feet away. The process becomes quite satisfying after adding hundred of meters of thread and suddenly, an impression appears.

They are not always portrait of people he knows or situation that he has experienced or they are there because they represent something about him. But rather they represent realities about the world we live in. They usually stitched up from many different people, ideas, images, happenings, thoughts, historical references or imaginary moments. He uses hi own photo archive as well as found images and he assembles them in a way to create a new narratives. Sometimes the work directly explains the concept and sometimes it opens new doors for multiples ideas to be interpreted.