Anna Laudel presents Cansu Yıldıran’s solo exhibition “The Dispossessed” at ZAİ Yaşam Bodrum between 13 June and 6 July 2025. Marking the artist’s first solo show with Anna Laudel, “The Dispossessed”features a selection from Yıldıran’s autobiographical series, which they have been developing for over a decade.
The powerful series that gives the exhibition its title focuses on forms of resistance developed against processes of dispossession, through an alliance between women, nature, and animals in the Kuşmer Highland of the Black Sea region. Yıldıran explores the possibilities of belonging, caretaking, and forming connections with place beyond the framework of patriarchal property regimes.
Although the Kuşmer Highland lies within the borders of Bayburt, its land deeds belong to the village of Şur (Şahinkaya) in Çaykara, located miles away. In this area, where the private property regime denies women the right to own land or housing, Yıldıran’s mother, having married and relocated, does not even have a single tree to her name. Nevertheless, the artist’s family continues to return to the highland every year—a continuity reflected in “The Dispossessed” series. The works in the exhibition intertwine this historical and social context with the artist’s personal memory and nomadic life experience.
Distinguished by its theoretical depth, the series “The Dispossessed” centers not only on women but also on the relationships they form with the living and natural entities around them. While addressing the pressures and inequalities faced by the women of Kuşmer, Yıldıran does not define them through victimhood. On the contrary, Yıldıran highlights how they root themselves in place through productive practices such as cultivating, harvesting, gathering, and preserving. By portraying alternative modes of existence, Yıldıran reveals ways of relating to place beyond the confines of ownership. The relationships they build with the land, plants, and animals, through gestures of twisting, bending, and adapting, emerge as acts of resistance. Faces illuminated by flash, grotesque bodies, and uncanny landscapes compose the visual language of this resistance.
In addition to photographs from “The Dispossessed”, the exhibition also showcases the breadth of Cansu Yıldıran’s practice through the installation “Kız Kardeşler” and the experimental video “Lifelong Guest”. In “Kız Kardeşler” the artist brings together nine distinct frames to revisit fragmented childhood memories, addressing the erosion of memory over time and the absence of a sense of belonging. The documentary “Lifelong Guest” focuses on the rituals and everyday life of the Pontic people, recording both personal and collective memory through oral history. It also opens a window into the artist’s own family history and regional archive.
Cansu Yıldıran’s exhibition “The Dispossessed” is not merely a visual record of a geography; it is also a powerful call to imagine new forms of belonging, resistance, and existence. The series that gives the exhibition its name will be presented to an international audience as part of the 15th Shanghai Bienniale, taking place from 8 November 2025 to 31 March 2026.
Anna Laudel is also pleased to announce its representation of Cansu Yıldıran with this exhibition.