Ali Kazma

Ali Kazma was born in Istanbul, Turkey, in 1971 and lives and works in Istanbul and Paris. He makes videos and photographs. The videos are shown as high-definition installations on one screen or several, and he shoots and edits every one himself.

His subject is human activity: labour, time, bodies, gestures and the spaces where things are made. His camera stays with factories, workshops, machines and repeated daily tasks. He has made more than sixty videos and has two long-running series, Obstructions, begun in 2005, and Resistance, begun in 2012. Single works include Clock Master (2006) and O.K. (2010), a seven-channel installation that follows a notary stamping documents. Sumi (2025) looks at how ink is made in Nara, Japan.

Kazma studied at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and completed an MA at The New School, New York, in 1998. In 2013 he showed Resistance in the Pavilion of Turkey at the 55th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia. Solo exhibitions followed at Jeu de Paume, Paris, in 2017, MAXXI, Rome, in 2019 and Istanbul Modern in 2025. In 2001 UNESCO gave him its Prize for the Promotion of the Arts, and nine years later he won the Nam June Paik Award. Collections holding his work include Tate Modern, London, and the Centre national des arts plastiques, Paris.