Ahmet Furkan Inan
Ahmet Furkan Inan is an art historian, writer and editor working across the intersections of contemporary art, historiography and the politics of time. He is reading for a DPhil in History and Theory of Contemporary Art at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford.
Inan previously studied Archaeology and History of Art at Koç University in Istanbul between 2015-2020, and hold an MA in History of Art from University College London. In his MA thesis, he focused on the work of Sarkis Zabunyan, a Turkish-Armenian artist living in Paris. Examining the ways in which Sarkis’ installation Çaylak Sokak (1986) complicates conventional assumptions about the historicity of a work of art, he analysed how the installation’s hauntological qualities render the limits of art history visible.
Before coming to Oxford, Inan was the managing editor of the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art between 2021-2023. He occasionally writes for art and culture publications from Istanbul, such as Argonotlar, Varlık, Istanbul Art News and Art Unlimited.
His research at the Ruskin, supported by the Open-Oxford-Cambridge DTP, St John’s College and the Clarendon Fund, centers on the art produced and exhibited in Istanbul between 1992-2013. Focusing primarily on the Istanbul Biennial, he is interested in the ways in which artists from beyond the Global North engage with the complicated histories of their geographies in their works, the kinds of historical models that are proposed by them, and whether these artistic practices may inform alternative methodologies for art history.
