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Elif Uras was born in Ankara in 1972. She graduated from the School of Visual Arts in 2001 and continued towards her master’s degree at Columbia University School of Arts in 2003. Uras makes figurative and narrative paintings, drawings and china. Being Turkish and living in New York, her subject matter deals with both an in and outsider’s view on the Eastern and Western world: an orientalist’s stereotyped Western view on the East, and the occidentalist’s Eastern view on the West. Her works reveal a hybrid world of the oriental, sensual, exotic body in a capitalist, liberal and secular world. Headscarved women, nudes, developers, NRA supporters, day labors, hammam bathers, newly weds, Hispanic nannies and belly dancers populate her paintings. Politics, economy, desire and hedonism is as intertwined as Uras’ use of ornamentation. The excess and decadence of the motifs is reflected in the shiny surfaces of the canvasses. A shine generated by Uras’ generous use of molding paste underneath the vibrant colors of oil, allows for a formal and tactile opulence to occur. Uras refers to the Western art history in her work. Rococo, History Painting, Post-Impressionalism, Art Nouveau, Symbolism and Surrealism are some of the references in general.
Her works were exhibited in the Greater New York exhibition at the P.S.1/ MOMA Contemporary Art Centre in 2005. She also exhibited her works at the Smith Stewart, New York in 2008, Galerist Istanbul in 2006, Kenny Schachter/ ROVE, New York and the Proje 4L Elgiz Museum of Contemporary Art in Istanbul. Her works were also included in The ArtReview 25 and Emerging US Artists at Phillips de Pury & Company in New York in 2005. There have been articles published on her works in the Art Review and the New York Times. Uras currently splits her time between New York and Istanbul.
Reference: kirkhoff.dk; artnet.com; Sotheby’s London Contemporary Art Turkish, 4 March 2009 (London 2009), p. 55 and 103.
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