Hande Sever

Email:

hsever@ucsd.edu

Website:

https://www.handesever.org

Biography:

Hande Sever is a research-based artist and scholar from Istanbul, whose work critically engages with theories of sovereignty and necropolitics, with a particular focus on the role of art within resistance practices from West Asia. Her research spans the visual cultures of modern and contemporary West Asia and its diasporas, colonial studies, and traditions of materialist thought, bringing these frameworks to bear on the cultural politics of the region. Her research explores critical questions surrounding state power, violence, and resistance, investigating the dynamics of authoritarianism and its intersections with visual culture in contexts of military violence, surveillance, and censorship. Through these lenses, she examines how visual culture both reflects and challenges broader socio-political narratives. Sever’s critical and scholarly writing has been featured in publications, including the Getty Research Journal, FIELD: A Journal of Socially Engaged Criticism, Stedelijk Studies, Public Art Dialogue, MARCH: A Journal of Art and Strategy, X-TRA Contemporary Art Quarterly, Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles, and Frieze Magazine. Her research-based projects have been supported by grants from the Félix González-Torres Foundation, California Arts Council, Eidolon Center for Everyday Photography, Allianz Foundation, and the Hrant Dink Foundation. Currently completing her dissertation at UCSD’s Art History, Theory, and Criticism program, with a concentration in Art Practice, she was also an Annette Merle-Smith Fellow at UCSD’s CARTA program at the Salk Institute and a Sara Clarke Kaplan Predoctoral Fellow at UCSD’s Black Studies Project.