Cihan Çakmak is a visual artist born in 1993 in Osterholz-Scharmbeck, Germany. Based in Berlin and Lisbon, she develops an interdisciplinary practice that brings together photography, video, sound, drawing, and text. After studying photography at the Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts, she completed her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig (HGB Leipzig) as a student of Prof. Tina Bara and was awarded the title of Meisterschülerin in 2023. She also attended the Advanced Studies Program at the International Center of Photography in New York.
Çakmak’s artistic practice is shaped by themes of identity, belonging, migration, intergenerational trauma, body politics, and feminist subject formation. Using photography and self-portraiture as critical tools through which to question the social gaze and modes of representation, she investigates the relationship between personal and collective memory. Both poetic and political, her work seeks to reveal the points at which personal experience and social history intersect.
Recipient of the Paula Modersohn-Becker Emerging Artist Award in 2020, the Rössing Prize in 2021, and the Ein-blicke-Preis in 2023 for her film where I left you at the blicke – film festival of the ruhr area (Bochum), an award presented to films with biographical or thematic connections, Çakmak is regarded as one of the notable emerging voices in the European contemporary art scene. Her works are held in major public and private collections, including Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig, Museum Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, and the Arendt Collection Luxembourg. Through a practice that brings personal narratives into dialogue with collective memory and identity politics, Çakmak continues to present her work in international exhibitions and events.
