Ufuk ali Gueray

Ufuk Ali Gueray was born in Herrenberg, Germany, and has lived in Germany, Canada and Scotland. They hold a BFA in Studio Art and French Studies from Concordia University, and an MFA in Fine Art from the Glasgow School of Art. From 2013 to 2018, they taught painting, drawing, and printmaking at the University of Manitoba School of Art. In 2014, they received an Honourable Mention in the RBC Canadian Painting Competition. In 2017, they participated in the Manitoba Arts Council's Deep Bay Artists’ Residency in Riding Mountain National Park. In 2018, they received a Major Arts Grant as well as the Brooklyn Visual Arts Residency grant from the Manitoba Arts Council, and spent the spring of 2018 as artist-in-residence at the International Studio & Curatorial Program in Williamsburg, New York.

They now live in Kjipuktuk/Halifax where they make art and occasionally teach at NSCAD. 

For my recent series of works, I have been using curator and writer Sara Raza’s concept of Punk Orientalism as a framework. In considering what might make a line, an image, a gesture, or a colour Eastern or Western, I am trying to engage with both the politics and aesthetics of cultural belonging, and the absurdity involved in trying to fix and formulate identity.