Hande Sever

Email:

Website:

https://www.handesever.org

Biography:

Hande Sever is an artist and writer from Istanbul whose art-historical research draws on theories of sovereignty and necropolitics to examine modern and contemporary art as a site where state power becomes materially, spatially, and affectively legible through processes of commissioning, exhibition-making, and censorship. She analyzes how state violence operates not as an external intervention but as a constitutive force in the making, reception, and destruction of artworks. Through these lenses, Sever traces how visual culture both reflects and contests broader sociopolitical formations. Her critical and scholarly writing has appeared in Oxford Art Journal, Getty Research Journal, FIELD: A Journal of Socially Engaged Art Criticism, frieze, MARCH: A Journal of Art and Strategy, Public Art Dialogue, Stedelijk Studies, X-TRA, and in the edited volume Perspectives on In/stability (The Art Institute of Chicago, 2022). She was a 2023–2024 Sara Clarke Kaplan Predoctoral Fellow at UC San Diego’s Black Studies Project, a 2023–2024 Annette Merle-Smith Fellow at UC San Diego’s CARTA program at the Salk Institute, and the recipient of the University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI) 2025 Dissertation Support Award, as well as the 2026 University of California President’s Dissertation Fellowship. She is currently a 2025–2027 Visiting Scholar at the University of Southern California (USC) Center for Advanced Genocide Research and a 2026–2027 Visions and Voices Fellow with the USC Center for Advanced Genocide Research and the USC Institute of Armenian Studies.

Selected publications:

Peer-Reviewed Publications:

Book Chapter: “Learning from Athens: Protest and Dissent in Staging Replica of Oath Stone.” In The Borders of Art: Migration, Mobility, and Artistic Practice. Edited by Dina Ramadan and Sarah Rogers. Cairo, Egypt: American University in Cairo Press, forthcoming.
“New Spatial Visions: Hadi Bara’s Critique of Architecture Formes Couleur.” Oxford Art Journal, vol. 49, no. 1, March 2026.
Book Review: “The Everyday Life of Memorials: Andrew M. Shanken.” Public Art Dialogue, vol. 14, no. 2, August 2024.
Book Chapter: “Empty Fields Revisited.” In Perspectives on In/stability. Edited by Delinda Collier and Robyn Farrell. Chicago, IL: The Art Institute of Chicago, 2022.
“In Dialogue with Nails: Kuzgun Acar’s Elegy to a Modern Man.” World Art, no. 12, August 2022.

Online Content:

Reflection: “The Case of Outgoing Autocrats.” Georgia Journal (June, 2024).
Essay: “A Casket for All Seasons.” MARCH: A Journal of Art & Strategy (November, 2023).
Reflection: “An Ode to Geraniums.” XTRA Contemporary Art Journal (November, 2019).