Kutluğ Ataman (born 1961 in Istanbul Turkey) is an acclaimed Turkish-American contemporary artist and feature filmmaker. Ataman's films are known for their strong characterization and humanity. His early art works examine the ways in which people and communities create and rewrite their identities through self-expression, blurring the line between reality and fiction. His later works focus on history and geography as man-made constructs. He won the Carnegie Prize for his works Kuba in 2004. In the same year he was nominated for Turner Prize for his work Twelve.

The gallery's relationship with Kutlug Ataman started back in 2002 with the publication of an interview with Ataman by Niru Ratnam for The Observer on the occasion of the artist's solo exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery. Born in Istanbul in 1961, Ataman left to go to film school in Los Angeles in the early 1980s. He returned in the mid-90s as an openly gay practitioner making feature films. In 1997, Ataman changed technique, pointing a camera at the opera singer Semiha Berksoy for almost eight hours. The resulting work, 'semima b. unplugged' was picked up by the curator of the Istanbul Biennial and then in quick succession Ataman showed at the 1999 Venice Biennial and then the 2002 edition of documenta before winning the Carnegie Prize and being shortlisted for The Turner Prize in 2004. Ataman's work of this period focused on allowing his subjects to tell their stories and articulate their subject positions that often undermined the concept of fixed genders or sexualities in favour of more fluid, subjective points of identification. In 'Women Who Wear Wigs', which followed 'semima b. unplugged' four films were shown side by side featuring a left-wing activist who at the time of filming was still wanted by police, a journalist suffering from cancer, a devout Muslim student and a transexual prostitute who had been subject to police brutality. Each subject talked about how they constructed their identities in part through wearing wigs for reasons that went from responding to cancer treatment through to an alternative in an educational environment where headscarves were banned. As Tate's summary to it puts it (the museum acquired the piece in 2011): "Ataman examines the many different factors – whether conditioned by society or by individual actions and beliefs, or simply the result of natural events, such as illness – that are involved in the creation of personal identity. " Many of the readings of the works that Ataman became well-known for during this period might be seen as pre-figuring contemporary debates around identity and subjectivities. As Elizabeth Schambelan wrote in Artforum in 2010 on Ataman's mid-career retrospective at Istanbul Modern, " The artist’s grand themes—the heroic nature of self-creation and self-transformation, the fluidity and inherent performativity of gender, sexuality, and personality—are themselves politically sensitive, insofar as they are unabashedly queer." In the mid 2010s though, Ataman moved focus once more, towards a more holistic concept of art, culture and environmentalism and a critique of neo-liberalism and global capitalism. For his Palanga Art & Architecture Farm, Ataman started a livestock farm in Anatolia before inviting architects to develop projects and structures that were shaped by the behaviour and needs of the lifestock. A number of the buildings including KA House and the House of Chickens have won architectural awards. Ataman has recently returned to exhibiting in more conventional gallery settings, with his installation 'Küba', rows of 40 television sets replaying individual stories of Kurdish stories of violence featured in 'Portals' in Athens until 31 December 2021, curated by Elina Kountouri and Madeleine Grynsztejn. After a break from working with commercial galleries, Ataman will exhibit two exhibitions with Niru Ratnam Gallery in April to May 2022. Continuing a conversation that began twenty years ago, the gallery is delighted to announce that it now represents Kutluğ Ataman.