Ahmet Öğüt is a Turkish artist based in Amsterdam. His work encompasses various media – installation, video, drawing and text – and examines the patterns of social and public movement through urban spaces. For the Venice Biennale, Öğüt’s work, Exploded City, used a mock-architectural model of a fictional city to explore contemporary notions of collective space and environment. Each model existed as a mark of our familiar public spaces (civic structures, hotels, offices, places of worship and public transportation), yet each structure in the ‘model city’ represented an actual building or object destroyed or significantly damaged in a terrorist attack. Through an indelible mark of collective grief these composite locations examined the notion of urban trauma. The artwork featured an architectural fact sheet on each structure, the history relating to its damage, and a faux travel guide, almost rendering the work as an exemplary 21st-Century tourist attraction of spectacle.

Öğüt’s solo exhibitions include Ahmet Öğüt, Mala Galerija / The Museum of Modern Art of Ljubljana, 2005; Softly But Firmly, Galerija Miroslav Kraljevic, Zagreb, 2007; Across the Slope, Centre d’Art Santa Mònica, Barcelona, 2008; Mutual Issues, Inventive Acts, Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland, 2008; and Things we count, Künstlerhaus Bremen, 2009. Group exhibitions include Lapses, 53rd Venice Biennial, The Pavilion of Turkey, Venice, 2009; 28th Biennial of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana, 2009; 7th SITE Santa Fe Biennial, 2008; 5th Berlin Biennial, 2008; Stalking with Stories, Apexart, New York, 2007, and 9th Istanbul Biennial, 2005.