Güler Ates

Güler Ates was born in eastern Turkey in 1977 and lives and works in London, where she earned a Master’s degree in Printmaking from the Royal College of Art. Her work explores themes of displacement and cultural identity.

In historic houses and museum interiors, she places veiled figures that, through movement and layering, blur into apparitions. The light and composition draw inspiration from the Dutch Masters, while patterns and motifs from Islamic art serve both to conceal and reveal.

In this way, she brings together Eastern and Western visual traditions within a single space. She questions the orientalist gaze directed at the veiled woman without denying its existence. Ates’s work is included in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. In 2012, she had her first solo exhibition in the Netherlands, titled Unveiling the Veil.

A figure in a historic European interior, present and yet partially hidden from view.

Ates plays with the effect of the veil: it conceals and simultaneously draws all attention to itself.

Whether one sees a person here, or primarily an idea, says something about the viewer.

In the workplace too, we are quicker to make assumptions about someone than we can justify.