Gülsün Karamustafa was born in 1946 in Ankara, Turkey. She received her MFA from the Istanbul Academy of Fine Art in 1969. One of Turkey’s most outspoken and celebrated artists, Karamustafa has an extensive oeuvre distinguished by installations, paintings, sculptures, and videos that examine the complexities of gender, globalization, and migration. In her figurative paintings of the late 1970s and early ’80s, Karamustafa inscribes a realistic approach with references to folk tradition, narrating the incongruities of a rapidly urbanizing Istanbul and the shifting roles and expectations of women. Interior scenes characterized by classical architectural motifs, furniture, and textiles are juxtaposed with the trappings of contemporary global consumerism. In the Lacemaker (1976), for example, a woman wearing an ordinary striped t-shirt paired with a traditional embroidered skirt sits in a domestic space. Patches of lace partially obscure the modern household accessories—telephone, radio, cassette tapes, and television—that surround her. In the late ’80s, in a natural extension of her painting practice, Karamustafa began making sculptures and installations using found objects. These alluded to the lingering effects of colonialism and the ongoing global assault of late capitalism, and to the personal impact of such geopolitical shifts. In Courier (1991), for example, Karamustafa addresses themes of childhood and migration by embroidering her own poetry onto three small vests. These are accompanied by an explanatory caption: “As we crossed borders, we used to hide what was important for us by sewing them inside children’s vests.” Create Your Own Story with the Given Material (1997) features child-sized white cotton shirts that have been sewn shut with black cord, a further meditation on the plight of immigrant children in Turkey, for whom safe passage into the country and subsequent freedom of movement remain open to question. Karamustafa’s approach—poetic, but also marked by a documentary impulse—serves to address the marginalization of women and the violence witnessed by itinerant populations in the wake of Western economic and territorial expansion. Karamustafa has had solo exhibitions at the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva (1999); Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany; Museum Villa Stuck, Munich; and Dunkers Kulturhus, Helsingborg Museer, Sweden (all 2006); Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany (2008); and SALT Galata, Istanbul (2013). She participated in the group exhibitions How Latitudes Become Forms: Art in a Global Age, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2003); Ethnic Marketing, Centre d’art contemporain, Geneva (2004); Centre of Gravity, Istanbul Museum of Modern Art (2005); The 1980s: A Topology, Museu Serralves, Porto, Portugal (2006); Artevida Politica, Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro; and Art Histories, Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Austria (both 2014); and Body Doubles, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and Unorthodox, Jewish Museum, New York (both 2015). Her work was featured in the Istanbul Biennial (1987, 1992, and 1995); Havana Biennial (2003), Guangzhou Triennial, and Cairo Biennial (both 2008); Singapore Biennial (2011); Kiev Biennial (2012); Thessaloniki Biennial, Greece (2013); and São Paulo Biennial: How to Talk About Things That Don’t Exist, and Gwangju Biennial: Burning Down the House, South Korea (both 2014). Karamustafa lives and works in Istanbul.