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. Her critical and scholarly writing has appeared in Oxford Art Journal, 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. Her research-based projects have been supported by grants from the Félix González-Torres Foundation, California Arts Council, Eidolon Center for Everyday Photography, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the Hrant Dink Foundation. Sever is currently completing her dissertation in the Art History, Theory, and Criticism program at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), with a concentration in Art Practice. She was a 2023–2024 Sara Clarke Kaplan Predoctoral Fellow at UCSD’s Black Studies Project, a 2023–2024 Annette Merle-Smith Fellow at UCSD’s CARTA program at the Salk Institute, and the recipient of the University of California Humanities Research Institute's 2025 Dissertation Support Award. She is currently a 2025–2026 Visiting Scholar at the University of Southern California’s Center for Advanced Genocide Research.
