Ali Kazma

Ali Kazma

Ali Kazma

Ali Kazma is a lens-based media artist working primarily with video born in Istanbul in 1971. He lives and works in Paris.

His practice focuses on human activity as both subject and material. He investigates how individuals transform matter, space, and time through work, and how these processes reflect broader social, economic, scientific, and ethical structures.

At the core of his work is a close observation of gestures, tools, bodies, and rhythms. The artist immerses himself in spaces of production---factories, workshops, laboratories, operating rooms, rehearsal studios - where human knowledge, skill and concentration shape reality. Whether filming a steel mill, a slaughterhouse, a brain surgeon, or a master watchmaker assembling a nineteenth-century clock, the artist's interest lies in the relationship between the visible precision of action and the invisible systems of knowledge and discipline that sustain it.

Kazma's approach balances proximity and distance. He seeks an intimate visual engagement with his subjects while maintaining a certain objectivity that allows the complexity of each situation to emerge without dramatization. He is drawn to moments of absorption, competence, and self-mastery. Work, in his films, appears as a field of tension where control and vulnerability, repetition and transformation, tradition and modernization coexist. Each work is constructed through precise framing, duration, editing, allowing the internal rhythm of each activity to determine the structure of the film.

Most of Ali Kazma's exhibitions take on the form of installations, compromising of multiple projections, screens, photographs, objects and light-boxes. He always starts the exhibition process with the goal of creating dynamic viewing experiences for the audience. It is very important for the artist to establish an on-going dialogue between the works and the audience: A space for creative reflection and thought.

Through long-term series such as Obstructions and Resistance, and recent explorations of writing, literature and books, the artist has developed an evolving archive of human gestures and know-how. Each work contributes to a broader reflection on social organization and the value assigned to human activity. Kazma is attentive to the effects of modernization and accelerated technological transformation, particularly in contexts undergoing rapid change, while engaging with urgent questions about labor, knowledge, and the construction of meaning in contemporary societies.

By carefully framing and editing these moments of human action and thought, the artist aims to open a space for aesthetic and ethical reflection---one that invites viewers to reconsider the structures, energies, and commitments embedded in everyday acts of production and creation.

Ali Kazma represented Turkey at the 55th Venice Biennale - Pavilion of Turkey in 2013. Ali Kazma's other solo exhibitions include Museo Franz Mayer (Mexico City, 2026), Istanbul Modern Museum (2025), The Image Center (Toronto, 2025), Nouveau Musée National de Monaco (2023), MUNTREF (Buenos Aires, 2018), Jeu de Paume (Paris, 2017), Arter (Istanbul, 2015), Hirshhorn Museum (Washington, 2010).

Group exhibitions and biennials include Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain (Paris 2026), Maison Européenne de la Photographie (Paris, 2024), Lenbachhaus Museum (Munich, 2024), MAXXI (Rome, 2016), Musée d'Art Contemporaine de Lyon (Lyon, 2013), 30th Sao Paulo Biennial (Sao Paulo, 2012), Lyon Biennial (2007), Istanbul Biennial (Istanbul, 2001, 2007, 2011), Muzeum Sztuki Lodz (Lodz, 2012), Istanbul Modern (Istanbul, 2011), Museum Kunstpalast (Düsseldorf, 2010) and New Museum (New York, 2010).

He has received the UNESCO Prize for Promotion of the Arts in 2001 and the Nam June Paik Award in 2010. The artist's works have been included in a number of institutional collections including MoMA, New York, Tate Modern (London), CNAP (Paris), Istanbul Modern, MEP (Paris), Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, MONA (Tasmania), Sztuki Museum (Lodz), Fondation Cartier (Paris), TBA21 (Madrid), and VKV Foundation Collection (Istanbul).

During his stay at Le Fresnoy, Ali Kazma aims to produce a new multi-channel video and possibly some photographic images that will contribute to his on-going research looking at the way we shape our living environments through labor, creativity, craft and technology.