About Serkan Sarıer

Born in 1979 in Hanau, Germany, Serkan Sarier graduated from Antwerp Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 2001. In 2018 he received his MA at Goldsmiths University of London.

 

With a portfolio expanding from painting to video, the artist explores the meaning of a series of questions; “What if we grow up or exist in a community that is so far removed from what we associate with our own identity? What if our self-being, our ethnicity, our sexuality or our gender is so far detached from our surroundings, that this identity we intimately carry concludes in a sense of loss.” Thus, he stipulates themes like belonging, identity, surroundings and human relationships. In his artworks, Sarier breaks the stigmas of social identity such as; sexuality, gender, ethnicity and other forms of social identity. The artist ponders on the idea of ‘not belonging’ by transforming objects from their distinctive form to a fluid appearance. For Sarier, this transformation is a symbol of detachment from unwelcoming environments that confines social identity; a tool that questions perspectives, fears and unwritten rules. 

 

Serkan Sarier lives and works in New York.