Abstract:

For years human beings have always tried to prove that they exist as a being by constantly creating art and thinking conceptually. For contemporary artists’ concepts such as curiosity, anxiety, fear, becoming immortal, dream and sense of belonging have uniquely been shelter for them and these guide them during the creative process just to communicate with the society. With this approach in the contemporary art, particularly since the inevitable modernism period in the 20th century in the light of both social and cultural changes, identity, formatting, collage, reflection, transformation, metaphor, memory, culture, concept, other, reality, multi culture, tradition and representation issues have become among the major problematics and examined in depth through contemporary art by the contemporary artists. In the first quarter of the 20th century women's rights started to develop and beyond those developments subjects such as feminism, gender issues and semiotics were the main problematics in art. Moreover, the number of female artists increased and photography as well as mixed medium as disciplines were used and allowed the artists to decipher their notions. Dealing with all these existing issues, contemporary artists sometimes offered artworks and disciplines representing their identities with an existentialist approach while sometimes offering new choices and using various materials such as cinema, mass media and new images through their powerful art works. With this approach, avant-garde artists who have futuristic visions have suggested new forms of expressions by aiming to find concrete solutions to these problematics. Most of the avant-garde artists therefore, redefined the concepts such as identity, memory, culture, reality, multi-cultural and traditional issues with an artistic aspect and carried these to plastic platform through their powerful art works. In this study identity issue as a major problematic will be discussed. Moreover, how contemporary artists through their art works transform these subject matters into a living organism will be clarified. By doing so artists not only suggest us documentary and original art works but also at the same time they make a great progress by proving the artists’ eternal existence. Consequently, in this study mainly the documentary survey method was used. The purpose of the study is to clarify contemporary art’s problematics and introduce new approaches and suggestions through the selected art works. In this context, identity, as a major problematic will be examined and discussed through the contemporary artists and their powerful art works

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