REFIK ANADOL
Refik Anadol (b. 1985 in Istanbul, Turkey) lives and works in Los Angeles, California, USA. He received his MFA from UCLA’s Department of Design Media Arts.
Refik Anadol is a media artist, director, and pioneer in the aesthetics of data and machine intelligence. His body of work locates creativity at the intersection of humans and machines. By taking the data that flows around us as his primary material, along with the neural network of a computerized mind as a collaborator, Anadol paints with a thinking brush, offering us radical visualizations of our digitized memories and expanding the possibilities of architecture, narrative, and the body in motion. Anadol’s site-specific AI data sculptures, live audio/visual performances, and immersive installations take many forms, encouraging us to rethink our engagement with the physical world, its temporal and spatial dimensions, and the creative potential of machines.
Anadol’s work has been shown worldwide in numerous institutional exhibitions, including MoMA, New York City, USA (2022-2023); the Venice Architecture Biennale, Venice, Italy (2021); the National Gallery of Victoria 2020 Triennial, Melbourne, Australia (2020); MUTEK, Montreal, Canada (2020); Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2020); National Museum of China, Beijing, China (2019); Fotografiska, Stockholm, Sweden (2019); ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany (2019, 2018); the Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey (2015); Marta Herford Museum, Herford, Germany (2010); and the Contemporary Art Center – sentralistanbul, Istanbul, Turkey (2008). Public audio-visual performances have taken place in locations throughout the world, such as the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, USA (2018, 2014); Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria (2017, 2011, 2010); the Arc de Triomf, Barcelona, Spain (2011); the European Capital of Culture, Essen, Germany (2010); and many others. Anadol has been honored with the Lorenzo il Magnifico Lifetime Achievement Award for New Media Art (2019); the German Design Award (2017); Microsoft Research’s Best Vision Award (2013); among others.
