• Royce Fellowship
Ceyhun
Firat

Concentration 

Visual Art

Award Year 

2020

 I am a rising senior from Turkey. I was born and raised in the city of Istanbul until I started my undergraduate studies at Brown University in 2017. I started college as a cognitive science concentrator but after exploring various academic fields for two years, I ended up in the visual art department. With my research and practice, I hope to blur the cultural borders that create divisions across space and time and make room for alternative voices and visions. I am particularly interested in issues of history, community, and utopia/dystopia. I draw heavily from (art) history, with a specific interest in the geography in the geography I was born in, and I take into account my own personal experiences as a subject embedded in various societies. With this project in particular I want to create a synthesis between two seemingly disparate contexts: the archetypal modern museum with its linear narratives and the utopic queer night club with its escapist and communal ambitions. I am looking forward to creating a space that explores the tensions that arise from this synthesis and breaks various assumptions in the process.