Gökçen Cabadan

Gökçen Cabadan studied painting and art first at Dokuz Eylül University in Izmir and then in KASK in Ghent, the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Belgium. Cabadan belongs to an audacious group of artists from Turkey that dealt with the issues of queer identity since the late 1990s and developed subtle ways of expression that undermine the established visual and aesthetic male complicity. He has come to utilize his works to subvert traditional understandings of the ways in which paintings are conventionally presented and perceived. Cabadan’s authentic interpretations of traditional genres, subjects and techniques in the history of painting have come to provide his means for a subtle critique of the contemporary society’s treatment of queer culture.