Melike Kara, tirkel, 2024, acrylic and oil pencil on canvas, 200 × 180 cm

With the large-format painting tirkel, the initiative has chosen a painterly position for the first time in its 20-year acquisition history. In her artistic practice, Melike Kara processes traditions and stories that are in danger of disappearing and translates them into abstract, ornamental paintings, photo collages and spatial installations.
She asks how an oppressed population group can be brought into cultural memory. Kara’s Kurdish-Alevi roots are always the initial source and point of convergence. When her grandparents came to Germany with the guest worker movement in the 1970s, they were able to live out their suppressed Kurdish identity without fear for the first time, speak their language and cultivate their traditions and spirituality. Two generations later, Kara draws on personal and collective memories to make the oppressed visible through her art, as there is hardly any written tradition of Kurdish culture. The 2024 Young Acquisition is entitled “tirkel”, named after Kara’s grandmother’s place of origin in Turkey, thus making a direct reference to biographical and geographical history. With her art, Melike Kara questions her Kurdish identity in German socialization and responds with an aesthetic that is able to capture the beauty of everyday culture.